Ad Infinitum
by Speechwriter
Summary: As he forges inexorably toward the end of time, he may come to wonder if this is a world worth ruling. Science fantasy.
1. 1945

**Shiny new idea. Super-excited to share!**

**Speechwriter**

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><p><em>December 1945<em>

Tom Marvolo Riddle didn't quite know what to say to the squat wizard before him.

"Tell me or ... I'll kill your family?" Tom suggested.

The wizard just giggled, wheezing a spray of spittle across Tom's face. "No family here, nope nope, no family for young Gurdy."

Riddle wiped his face, barely restraining a derisive snort. Gurdy appeared to be a lot of things, but young was not one of them. The number of remaining teeth the man had was surely fewer than remaining fingers (of which, unpleasantly enough, there were eight). His skin bore a maze of wrinkles, leaving no inch uncreased.

"So if I threaten a few more times to kill you, in more creative ways, I'm assuming you still won't cooperate," Riddle said, approaching death by boredom. He'd been sitting here for two hours trying to talk information out of someone who was already crazy. Usually he had to _force_ them into blubbering insanity; the job wasn't just done when he arrived. This made things so much less enjoyable. "I'm getting quite tired of this, so if you have a suggestion -"

"Gurdy could trade," said the wizard, his drooping face growing serious as quickly as if Riddle had said a code word.

Riddle sat up straighter. Were they finally getting somewhere? "I do like a good trade," he said quietly. Of course, torture would have been simpler and easier, but with such a mentally unstable case, he feared the Cruciatus would destroy any possibility of information emerging intact from the man's toothless gums. Legilimency was out, too. The bizarre little man had an inexplicable talent for Occlumency that didn't at all befit his seeming psychological state.

Of course, Gurdy Bansherwold had once been brilliant. No denying that. Otherwise, Riddle wouldn't have needed anything from him.

He'd already spent the better part of seventh year tracking the man down - it couldn't be for nothing.

So he would trade.

"What do you want?" Tom asked.

Gurdy fidgeted, pulling his wooden stool closer. It scraped across the stone floor with an unbearable screech, and Tom's lip twitched in displeasure.

"Gurdy," the man breathed, "would be wanting your left shoe and a strand of your hair."

"My hair," Riddle repeated. "My _shoe_?"

"Your _left_ shoe, important distinction to make, must gotta be the left or else isn't worth nothing is it."

"...right," Riddle said. "And if I give you my shoe, and a hair, you'll tell me where you've hidden the Timeglass?"

"Gurdy longs to be rid of his twisty jumpy Timeglass," the old man whispered, a manic glint twinkling in his grey eyes. "He wants your left shoe and your hair_._"

Riddle didn't know what to do. This seemed too easy, too simple. He'd threatened the man with twelve different forms of torture in the first five minutes of their conversation. He'd offered a bribe of the equivalent of twenty thousand galleons. With all that, he'd been met with laughter and stupid jokes and bizarre third-person narration. And all Gurdy wanted for the Timeglass, an object that could foreseeably assist Tom in the subjugation of all mankind, was his _shoe_? And a _hair?_

Something was wrong here.

"What in the name of hell do you want with my shoe and my hair?"

"Left shoe contains both sweat formula and weight information calculable through Antimedes' Eighth Law of Transfigurative Hyperextension, hair means deoxyribonucleic acid, yep," Gurdy mumbled under his breath. "Yep yep."

"Deoxy ... what?"

"Tis a Muggle word, a Muggly Muggly turn of phrase Gurdy uses here."

Riddle sat back, his lips thin. References to Muggles? He was done with this. He would take pleasure in killing this imbecile once the transaction was complete. Who cared if Bansherwold had once been a genius of a Dark Wizard? He'd gone mad, and as such, had no further function - neither to Riddle nor the rest of the world.

What rubbish. Riddle had never heard of _Antimedes' Eighth Law of Transfigurative Hyperextension._ It didn't even sound real.

"Fine." He tugged off his left shoe, pulled a single dark strand from his head, and shoved them both at Gurdy, whose face lit up like Christmas had arrived ahead of schedule.

"Timeglass is in a lockbox in the backroom," Gurdy said.

"Your backroom was empty when I checked it."

"Fidelius Charm, Riddle. Gurdy does not reveal his secrets to any and all. Now take Timeglass, go, words for the lockbox are _nuperda tarziu._"

Riddle didn't know what the language was, but at this point, frankly, he didn't care.

"Bloody waste of time," he muttered, storming into the backroom. He looked forward to returning and reclaiming his shoe with a well-placed _Avada Kedavra._ He needed to get back to London, back to the orphanage, before Mrs. Cole noticed his absence; otherwise, he'd have to Obliviate her yet again, and she always got even more insufferable after a Memory Charm. This delay was not convenient.

_Only two more days until Christmas break is over, and then I'm back at Hogwarts,_ Riddle reminded himself, feeling foolish for the relief the self-reminder provided him. It was a necessary measure, though. Magical deprivation was physically painful for him, keeping it all bottled inside his wand and his books and his head.

He slammed the door to the backroom behind him. The lockbox sat in the previously-vacant corner.

"_Nuperda tarziu,_" Riddle spat, flicking his wand at the thing. It clicked open in one tiny, anticlimactic motion.

He stormed forward. The lockbox looked finely crafted - probably goblin made. He'd come back for it once Gurdy was dead, his body burned.

Letters lay carved into the edge. He frowned, reading them. _Quod recens natus erit senex._ Latin, obviously, but no spell derivations...

But he discarded all thought of the words when he saw the Timeglass. The size of his palm, cut like the finest diamond, it held a flickering spot of fire in its center.

Riddle shook his head. Magnificent. And stowed away in this hovel, where its power was utterly wasted ... He still remembered the moment last summer when he'd yanked the Resurrection Stone from Morfin's unmoving hands before modifying the man's memory. Bizarre, how often such wonderful things came from filth. Such powerful things, hidden among the muck...

As Riddle reached for the object, emotion caught in his throat, and his brow creased. He couldn't help it. The only thing he loved was power.

It was then that he heard a strange noise, identifiable instantly. Cackling wheezing laughter. Gurdy's spittle-laden mirth.

_Let's get this over with. _Pursing his lips, Tom pocketed his wand and lifted the Timeglass from the bottom of the chest.

A slow, ominous whistle crept into the air. Tom looked around, his fingers tightening around the Timeglass.

Then a deafening _bang._

And the world tore itself apart piece by piece, fragment by fragment.

Tom Riddle had been born quiet. As a child, he'd been withdrawn and calm. As a young student, he'd watched and listened rather than making noise of his own. Even now, as Head Boy, he rarely raised his voice higher than the volume necessary to reprimand students who were being raucous in the halls. In fact, he had experimented with certain types of dark curses on himself while they'd been in the developmental stage, and he had hardly whimpered even then.

Now?

His mouth stretched wide, and he _screamed_.

His body sang with the purest sort of pain, the pain that whites one's vision and blacks one's mind, the pain that rings clear to the surface of the skin, coating it with a slimy layer of sweat.

He held onto the Timeglass in an act of selfish defiance, an act he would have deemed foolish had he possessed any sense of judgment at the time. It was only after an eternity of agony that he let go.

The pain vanished.

When Tom Riddle stopped screaming, he found himself curled in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, surrounded by staring Muggles.

Not good.

He staggered to his feet and took out his wand, much to the confusion of the closest Muggles. _Stupid creatures. _When he snarled, "_Obliviate,_" the spell hurt his raw throat.

A blast rippled through the gathered people. They blinked, dazed, and resumed walking in their prior directions. Like sheep, all of them.

Riddle shook, trembled, quivered. His eyes fixed on the passing cars, and he experienced a split second of blinding panic. He'd never seen this type of vehicle. The Muggle machines slid by, low to the ground, oddly beautiful. Noise buzzed around him, honked, blared.

Through his robes, his fingers found the lump in his pocket that was the Timeglass. He'd let go of it in the swirl of agony - how had it stayed with him?

What the hell had the Timeglass done?

Where was he?

This Muggle technology... _When_ was he?

Riddle had researched the experimental magic involved in time-turning. He'd tortured the information out of an Unspeakable. But time-turning did not - could not_ -_ turn time forward. It could not create what had not yet occurred.

What had Bansherwold created? All rumors had reported the Timeglass to be a particularly potent form of turner, the most advanced of the day. More importantly, it was an instrument that could do what no turner had managed: It could slow and even freeze time. But _this... _this was inexplicable even by the most brilliant of magical theorists. And Riddle would know, having read everything by all of them.

Riddle stumbled down the street, jostled by Muggles. He had to stop himself from cursing them into oblivion as they knocked into him.

Then his eyes fell on a stack of newspapers stuffed inside a metal distributor, and he ceased all movement. All action. All thought. Three words at the top of the paper gripped his heart in claws of iron and squeezed.

_September 1st, 1997._

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><p><strong>By all means drop me a review, if that sort of thing takes your fancy. Ta-ta for now!<strong>

**Speechwriter**


	2. 1997

**Wow. Never had such a fantastic response on a first chapter before! Love you guys:**

**NS, Dr. Shanty, Chamilia Lutien Tinuviel, murtagh799, Kissable-Luxury, Kirtash R, moor, Remi, Annevader, AdrianeDreamer101, iruka92, Weird-Chik2, McMuffin, Cellar, Zombie Reine, gleeislove, akatsuki's hikari (hehehe i added 'and beyond' to the description), anon, TK Grimm, summerful21, Bandle, Last Laugh, Lost O'Fallon Girl, Valkyrie Evans, EmeraldGoddess52, Lania26.**

**By the way, **ChildoftheLight, OH MY GOD I TOTALLY DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE HOW MUCH LIKE GURGI GURDY'S SELF-NARRATION WAS. :D only, you know, he's not a weird dog-thing. Kudos for having watched that movie! I love it so much!****

**A note for all: I'd like to forewarn that this is not going where you probably think it's going. And that the chapters might be short for a while. Not sure about that, but it's possible. So yep.**

**Onward!**

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><p><em>1997.<em>

_Bloody hell. 1997._

Riddle kept still, as if by not moving he could freeze the world into submission. This couldn't be happening. Not to him. Not now. He had things to do, things of a sensitive and delicate nature.

After a good five minutes, something clicked into place in his mind, and his heart gave a tremendous leap. If he truly had arrived in 1997, he could find out how all his plans were unfolding. The fact that Muggles still walked freely around London disheartened him; it meant he'd fallen behind schedule. But his immortality, as planned, would extend the scope of said schedule quite a bit.

Riddle glanced up at the grey sky. It appeared to be late morning.

September first, according to that newspaper.

Maybe ...

Riddle snuck into an alley, turned on his heel, and Apparated to a small street near King's Cross. He modified a few memories and hurried inside the station.

Riddle stared for a moment, alarmed by the whining steel trains, so different from the clunky steamers of his time. He recovered quickly, though - Muggle machinery bore no concern for him - and made for Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

He slipped through the barrier without event, one minute to spare before departure.

The sight of the Hogwarts Express sent a wave of relief barreling through him. Hogwarts would not have changed - could not have changed. And if it had, it could only be through his machinations. Change for the better.

Tom sifted through the milling parents as quickly as possible and flung himself aboard the train just before the doors hissed shut. He traversed a clot of students trying to sort out whose trunk was whose and found an empty compartment at the end of the car.

As he slid the door shut behind him and took in his surroundings, he mused that the paneling inside the Express had definitely been replaced. Shortly thereafter, he realized how much he was fixating on the trivial in the vain effort to counteract this sense of imbalance. Wrongness.

Tom Riddle did not panic. That would have been embarrassing.

Instead, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and settled into deep thought, levitating the Timeglass out of his pocket.

It revolved before him. The speck of fire within entranced him, casting a red glint to his dark eyes.

The train started to move.

"What are you?" he whispered to the Timeglass, caressing the surface of the crystal with his wandtip. His entire body shivered with the thrum of power that rocketed through the wand.

Did this mean this world was the only possibility for the future? Nothing could be changed?

Riddle wondered how the world had transformed in the fifty years he'd lost. Had the magical world made any new discoveries he could bring back to his time? He could have an advantage over everyone.

Maybe there were Time-Turners here that could transport him back to 1945.

Maybe he could -

A rattling at the door, and Riddle shifted the Timeglass back to his pocket, careful not to touch it. "Who's there?"

"Let us in!" squeaked a voice. "Hurry, please let us in. Snape's coming this way, and all the other compartments are taken."

_Who or what is Snape?_

Riddle pursed his lips, but flicked his wand after a second's debate. The door slid open.

Three people toppled in: a blonde with round grey eyes, a plump boy with dark hair, and a redheaded girl. They pulled trunks after them.

"Shut the door, shut the door," hissed the redhead, but the dark-haired boy managed to trip over his own feet and fall. The girl grappled with the compartment door herself, wrangling it shut. "_Colloportus_."

The three let out a collective sigh of relief. The boy hoisted himself back to his feet, pulling his robes back into place.

"Hello there," said the blonde, nodding to Tom. Her voice was airy, vague, like she wasn't quite sure what she was saying.

Tom nodded back.

The redhead finished loading their trunks into the overhead racks and turned around. Her clear brown eyes caught Tom's, and her mouth opened. "Ahh," she said, stumbling back, pressing herself against the wall. "_Aaahhhfuck. _Oh, bloody hell, I've gone mad."

Tom's eyes narrowed a bit. Maybe the girl was socially defunct, or something. "Are ... are you alright?"

"What in hell?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper this time. The plump boy put a hand on the redhead's shoulder.

The blonde cocked her head. "Something wrong, Ginny?"

"Him. That. Him."

Tom said, "I'm sorry, do we know each other? I don't recall having met you."

"Ginny Weasley," she spat, with what seemed like unnecessary vehemence. "Lovely to make your acquaintance_."_

Tom recoiled slightly. Why could people not keep their saliva in their mouths when they spoke? For God's sake.

He had to conceal his identity. After all, he assumed his future self was alive, and two Tom Marvolo Riddles in the same world could not be a good idea.

"Erm," he said, putting on his best bashful-teenager face. "I'm not sure who you think I am, but -"

The Ginny girl let out a disturbing sort of snarling noise, still wild-eyed. Her blonde friend settled into a seat, a serene look on her face.

Tom's eyes brushed over the blonde. Were those _radishes_ on her earrings? Was that necklace made out of _butterbeer caps?_

Oh, no. Not more people of questionable sanity. He'd had quite enough of that from Gurdy fucking Bansherwold.

"Who are you, then?" asked the boy.

Riddle cast around for a random name. A commonplace, unsuspicious name.

"I'm Harry," he said.

There was a long pause.

Ginny burst into hysterical laughter.

Tom caught the blonde's eye and made a subtle gesture toward Ginny, who was smacking the seat and cackling. "Is she..." Riddle motioned toward his head. "Normal?"

"You're asking _Luna_ if _Ginny_ is normal?" said the dark-haired boy, in obvious bafflement. "I mean, er, no offense, Luna."

"Oh, don't worry," Luna said, with half a smile. "I've often wondered about Ginny's mental health, too."

Riddle barely kept himself from turning his eyes to the heavens and bemoaning the unnecessary nature of this situation. "Listen. I've just transferred here this year -"

"OH, SURE," said Ginny. Everyone winced. "YOU JUST TRANSFERRED THIS YEAR. RIGHT." Her voice cracked.

"R-really, Ginny, are you feeling alright?" The plump boy fidgeted. "I'm Neville Longbottom, by the way ... Harry."

Riddle sat up a bit straighter. That was unexpected. Longbottom was a well-respected name, and the Longbottom he knew - Charles Longbottom, a Ravenclaw - was a formidable spellcaster. He was also slim, tan, and confident, nothing like this pale, stuttering lump. What had happened to the man's gene pool?

Probably married in with Muggles. Riddle kept his lip from curling, but only barely. Yes; this feeble-looking person looked the likely result of Muggle-loving filth.

"Good to meet you, Neville," Tom said.

"_Nice to meet you_," Ginny muttered. "Heh, heh."

Tom fixed her with a piercing stare. "Look, I don't know what the matter is, but repeating everything I say is hardly going to remedy whatever sort of delusion you're -"

"Sorry, sorry," she said. "It's just, you know, the fact that _you're Voldemort_ sort of makes it difficult to take anything you say seriously."

Neville flinched. "W-wait, what?"

Tom blanched and rallied immediately. "I - _what? _I've no clue why you -"

"You really oughtn't say the name," Luna said, mild concern passing over her face for the first time. "If Snape's walking by -"

_People fear my name._ Riddle felt a triumphant leap in his chest, and he picked up on Luna's cue. "Honestly," he said, staring. "How can you just toss that name around like that?"

For the first time, light confusion flickered across Ginny's face. She narrowed her eyes, opened her mouth, and closed it again.

"So your name's _Harry_," she said slowly, great irony layering her voice. "Last name?"

"Westfield."

She eyed his Slytherin robes. "And how have you been Sorted already?"

"Met with the Headmaster over summer."

"Snape. Slimy git," Ginny muttered. "All right, and you've been where for the last how many years that's prevented you from going to Hogwarts?"

"Homeschooled," Tom said. "What was so amusing about my name, by the way?"

Luna smiled brightly. "We have a good friend called Harry."

"Yeah, and he ..." Ginny said. "Never mind. What do your parents do, then?"

This girl's inquiries grew more irritating by the second, but Riddle brewed something up with ease. "My father travels around fixing people's broomsticks; my mother's a doctor."

Ginny's eyes narrowed further. "A _Muggle_ doctor?"

"Is that a problem?" Riddle said testily, applauding himself inwardly. If the girl suspected him of being himself, pretending to be something he reviled would surely help his case.

"Of course not." She glanced down at his robes again. "But you _are_ a Slytherin. Those robes look awfully outdated, by the way."

"My sincerest apologies for my lack of fashion sense. They're hand-me-downs."

"I ... no, no, this is stupid!" Ginny stood, her voice rising again. "You're him."

Neville cleared his throat. "Gin, maybe your memory might be a little fuzzy. It's been a long -"

She rounded on him. "I don't care if it's been five years or fifty. You don't forget something like that. He's an exact double."

The door to the compartment slid open.

Riddle eyed the man in the door with mild interest. His lank, greasy hair hung about a sallow face, and some deep hatred burned in those oil-black eyes.

"Weasley," the man said slowly, as if tasting something sour in the word. "Interesting that this door would be locked. And I thought I heard..."

The man's eyes fell on Riddle. His expression of distaste stiffened for a split second.

Riddle saw the hard hatred blazing in Longbottom's and Weasley's eyes, and he drew an inference. "Good morning, Professor Snape," he said, with a respectful nod.

One more perusal by Snape. Riddle felt the probe of a competent Legilimens, and he let his mind slide into blankness.

Snape shifted his gaze. Riddle relaxed.

"Will someone kindly explain why I hear such loud conversation from behind this door?" Snape said. "Must I require Amycus to accompany you for the remainder of the journey?"

"No, sir," Riddle said, as a short, piggy man with an uneven leer stepped into place beside Snape.

"No," repeated Ginny. "_Sir._"

Snape's lip lifted, making his hooked nose quirk to the left. "Your tone leaves something to be desired, Ms. Weasley."

"I beg forgiveness on my knees."

Riddle let out a sigh. Such an obvious Gryffindor move. No appreciation for subtlety.

Remarkably, Snape let them escape without being chaperoned by this Amycus fellow. But Riddle felt stifled nonetheless, by the mere presence of the other students. Once at Hogwarts, he needed to find some answers in the library. Hopefully they wouldn't try to follow him.

He just needed to wait this out.

Riddle bluffed his way through the rest of the train ride. The girl's initial recognition of him had been rather shocking, but she gave no explanation, so he let it go. In sitting back and observing the conversation, he even learned a few things: Snape had killed Albus Dumbledore. Snape worked for Lord Voldemort. Amycus Carrow and his sister Alecto also worked for Voldemort.

In short, Lord Voldemort had control of Hogwarts. And the Ministry. And pretty much everything else.

Riddle felt triumphant.

Still, Ginny Weasley wouldn't take her suspicious gaze off him. And that was not convenient.

Not convenient at all.

"Where's this other Harry, by the way?" he asked, at one point.

"Away," she said stiffly.

"Oh. So he doesn't go to Hogwarts anymore."

"As you may have gathered from his absence... no."

He kept himself from hitting the girl with some painful, illegal spell - but only barely. Smart remarks were not acceptable in his regime.

Well, this was his regime, wasn't it?

Then couldn't he curse them?

He sighed, glancing out the window. It would be simpler not to curse anyone, probably. He simply had to find a way back to his appropriate time so he could live out the entirety of his glorious reign; side endeavors were neither appropriate nor advisable.

Even if they were fun.

To Riddle's relief, Ginny, Neville, and Luna seemed all too happy to abandon him immediately upon exiting the Hogwarts Express. The student body exuded nervousness; Riddle heard murmurs and saw furrowed brows. The name _Snape _hung in the air like a pestilence, and beneath it, a forlorn undercurrent of _Albus Dumbledore_. Yes - the winds of change had certainly reached Hogwarts. Riddle couldn't help but allow himself a smirk.

As soon as the Thestral-drawn carriages reached the castle, Tom cast a Disillusionment charm and snuck up to the Library. The rows of books felt like sweet sanctuary, cushioning him from the disaster he'd fallen into.

The shelves were dark. "Lumos," Tom murmured, snapping his fingers. A warm glow appeared in his palm. Wandless magic somehow felt far more satisfying than its wanded counterpart, if only because he doubted anyone his age had ever had such a grip on the art.

Riddle peered down the shelves. _A Brief History of 20th Century Wizarding Britain_ popped out at him. That sounded a likely place to start catching up on his future.

He slid the tome from the shelf, sat at a table to peruse it, and flipped to the Table of Contents.

_Chapter 26. The Rise of the Dark Lord._

_Chapter 27. The Reign of Voldemort._

_Chapter 28. The Great Wizarding War._

Tom's heart beat hard, and his lips creased into a smile. He turned pages until he reached the Rise of the Dark Lord - this had happened, apparently, in the 1970s. By that math, he'd had full control of Britain for twenty-five years.

If that was the case, he sort of found it odd that his future self hadn't dispatched Albus Dumbledore long before 1997.

But when Riddle's eyes reached the end of the Wizarding War chapter - the subheading _The Boy Who Lived - _his expression grew thunderous.

An infant.

An infant had been his downfall?

_Harry Potter._

The girl's friend... _Harry._

She would pay. They would all pay.

Riddle slammed the book shut so hard that dust danced off its cover. He stuck his hand in his pocket for his wand -

His finger brushed the cool surface of the Timeglass -

The whine. The colossal bang. Riddle had just time to say, "_Shit_," before the world flipped and swirled and dumped him on his knees, raw pain rocketing over his every nerve ending once more.

He stood, panting, and checked that he was still in the library. The change in time had been miniscule compared to the previous jump - he could feel it somehow - and the place remained empty, if the furniture seemed a little rearranged. Perhaps not much had been altered.

That was a mistake he couldn't afford to make again. Riddle smoothed his hair back into place and shook his head. How could he find how much time he'd lost?

An outside observer might not have seen any change in his expression, but inwardly, Tom Marvolo Riddle scrolled through his vast libraries of knowledge. Papers. Books. Testimonies. Catalogs of charms, hexes, potions... and curses. Especially curses.

Gurdy Bansherwold - according to the now-dead Unspeakable source - had created the Timeglass to save the one he'd loved.

Instead, he'd driven himself insane.

Riddle wondered if the man had encountered this. If he'd leapt ahead instead of turning the clock back. If he'd seen something so terrible he could not even relieve his mind by virtue of a Pensieve.

Terrible curiosity seized Tom's heart. What lay at the end of time?

And if he saw it, would he be able to return, knowing the futility of all that came before?

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><p><strong>Hope you liked it! Please do drop me a note if you did.<strong>

**Best,**

**Speechwriter**


	3. 1998

**Thanks for bearing with me, guys! I was going to put this up yesterday, but FFnet was like NOO I THINK I WILL LOG YOU OUT EVERY TIME YOU GO TO YOUR DOCUMENT MANAGER. -_- So for a few horrible hours I thought I'd lost this chapter completely (because like an idiot I did not save it in its own word document).**

**So hooray for its continued existence! And hooray for these wonderful people:**

**ShimmeringWater, Twilight1243, TK Grimm, Sleepwriting, MandaPandaAR, Kissable-Luxury, Chamilia Lutien Tinuviel, Annevader, NS, McMuffin, le-femme-cavalier, EmeraldGoddess52, Lania26, moor, BeNeRre, Sachita, fallevelyn, gleeislove, akatsuki's hikari, Bandle, Weird-Chik2, sugurrushx3.**

**I have a hunch you may enjoy this chapter. (Though it is also short. I think that'll stop happening soon, though.)**

**Best -**

**Speechwriter**

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><p>Riddle cracked the door to the library and poked his head out, his shrewd gaze scanning the empty hallway. Scorch marks on the stones - a recent fight. Why?<p>

Then a mighty crash, and a voice yelling a curse - not a nice one, either: _Confringo._ Aimed at a person, complete human combustion would ensue. Sounded like it had missed, though, luckily for the intended target.

Riddle assumed this was one of his followers' doing. He Disillusioned himself - wouldn't want to get mistaken for some unimportant personage, after all - and crept down the hall toward the racket. Perhaps he could ask one of his followers to lead him to his future self, have a brief discussion on what course of action to take. Maybe theorists had unraveled the secrets of the Timeglass in the fifty-two years he'd lost.

Assuming it was still 1997, that was. No way to know.

And then the voice. The high, chilling voice. It rang off the corners of the stone halls, spoke from every cranny.

"I know that you are preparing to fight." A pause, and then it continued. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."

Tom somehow knew he was hearing his own voice, its rich baritone thinned by immortality and made piercing by amplification.

"Give me Harry Potter," said the voice of Lord Voldemort, "and they shall not be harmed. Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded."

A great pause. Riddle's fingers tightened around his wand. Harry Potter, the cause of his body's destruction, was _here in this very castle._

"You have until midnight."

From somewhere deep in the castle's bowels, chaos made its distant echo. Riddle was already running. He had to get to his sanctuary - he had to employ his darkest weapon. This Potter boy would be no match for it.

He strode into the tiled room, the _Open_ already slipping from between his lips in soothing Parseltongue. As the entrance to the Chamber slid wide, he flicked his wand. A film of ice coated the rough pipe, and he hoisted himself in, gliding down to the gloom below.

Riddle's sharp eyes caught the wet, glittering footprints. Someone had been here mere minutes ago. His jaw tightened, and he cast a shower of golden light from his wand, illuminating the path ahead.

Who had dared intrude upon the Chamber, the last sanctuary of the just? Who could have broken in? Why had the Basilisk not dispatched them already?

_My sweet,_ he hissed, moving forward. The breathy language reverberated off the stone around him. _Where are you? Come to me ... to me!_

Then he smelled it, and he stopped in his tracks.

The scent of old blood. Of tons of rotting flesh.

_No. Slytherin's Basilisk ... my birthright! _Riddle's aristocratic features twisted in rage. He stormed forward, flicked his wand, and the door to the Chamber tore itself from the wall, slamming into the stone floor with a heart-stopping crash.

Two figures knelt at the far end of the Chamber beside the tremendous corpse of the snake. One - a red-headed boy - shouted something, leaping to his feet. Riddle stood in the center of the ruined doorway, practically feeling the power pulsing in his wand, a perfect match to the bloody tint thudding in his vision. _They will pay._

A feeble Stupefy came his way. He barely restrained a laugh as he deflected.

"Who are you?" Riddle asked, striding down the long room toward Slytherin's great statue. _I want to know your names before I kill you._

"Who wants to know?" came the boy's strong voice. He was tall, wiry, and speckled with so many freckles he looked as if he had Spattergroit.

The girl stood too. "Don't tell him," she ordered the redhead, loudly enough that Riddle could hear her words. "You don't know who he is, don't tell him your name."

Tom couldn't hold back his derisive laugh this time. He stopped several feet from them. "Smart. Though if you were smarter, you would have run as soon as the door blew up."

The girl looked bedraggled, exhausted, but at his combative words, anger crossed her plain features. She slashed her wand forward, sending another hex his way. Riddle sidestepped this one, pleasantly surprised by the healthy hum of power it emitted. Maybe she would put up some sort of a fight - breaking those with some degree of talent always felt so much more satisfying.

"All the Slytherins already left," she said, her bossy voice still overloud. "I - I don't know how you found your way here, but you can - you can leave now and go with them."

She seemed to know what she was saying was ridiculous - as if anyone could find Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets _by mistake_. The girl's eyes flickered from place to place, as if plotting some escape. Tom's lip curled in a sneer. Any departure she made from the Chamber would be decidedly posthumous.

"No, I don't think I'll leave," he said, folding his arms. He tapped his chin with a finger, as if musing. "You see, I'm quite curious as to how two persons so obviously out of place found their way here. Secondly ... I have some unfinished business to complete."

The sibilant quiescence of his voice seemed to make the cool air shiver. He could have sworn he saw the boy shrink back a little.

Recognition flared in the girl's eyes. "You're... you're Tom Marvolo Riddle."

A smile was his response. Instantly, hexes blasted from the two wandtips facing him. He flicked his wand, directing the spells into the gaping jaw of the basilisk. They hissed wetly and extinguished. But Tom's wand hand faltered as he realized that one of its fangs was no more than a broken stump.

His eyes flicked to the girl's other hand, which clutched the fang.

_Desecration._

Distracted by his fury, Riddle barely ducked their next spells. "Crucio," he snarled, but they darted out of the way with surprising speed.

"Go!" the boy yelled. "Get out of here, Hermione!"

Riddle raised one eyebrow. "So that's your name. _Incarcerous._"

Ropes spat from his wandtip and wrapped up the girl's body, binding her from leg to neck in a tight cocoon.

"Run!" she screamed, even as she toppled to the floor. "Hurry! I'll be fine!"

"Oh, _Hermione_, that is a filthy lie," Riddle said, sending a casual array of curses at the boy, who blocked some and ducked others. "This is why killing Gryffindors is such a pleasure. You have this amusing notion of chivalry, as if you were the first people to sacrifice your lives for the ones you love so foolishly. You are not unique, Hermione. You are not special. You will die just as those before you: without dignity and without purpose."

She was already sobbing. "Please," she choked out to the boy. "Go, stay safe!"

The redhead shot off a line of spells from his wand, bellowing threats. Riddle batted the offense away with a few gentle swishes from his wand. He clicked his tongue, lips pulling wide in a cruel smile. "Now, now. No need to lose your temper. I don't have too much time to waste - I may be merciful. I may allow her a quick end."

The girl wriggled on the ground.

"Then again," Riddle said, "more likely not."

The boy let out a roar and bulled forward.

Riddle smirked. _Check and mate._

He flicked his wand. The boy had no time to shield; his body flew sideways as if yanked by a puppet's string. He smacked back-first into Slytherin's statue, and, pinned there, finally ceased his infernal noisemaking.

Riddle froze the boy's body in place, but left his eyes free to roam. Free to witness the torture and execution.

"Now," Riddle said, walking slowly toward the girl. "Answer my questions quickly, and your death shall be expedited, rather than prolonged. Understand?"

To his mild surprise, the look she gave him rivaled one of his own in derision, even from where she lay in the disgrace of defeat. "Of course I understand," she spat.

"Wonderful." He summoned her wand from where it had fallen and tucked it into his pocket, making sure not to touch the Timeglass. With a flick of the wand, he Vanished her bindings. Watching his prey thrash and spasm was half the enjoyment, after all.

But then something happened he had not anticipated.

The girl yanked something from her pocket. Her other hand still clutched the Basilisk fang - but now its tip pressed to the surface of a small golden cup. "D-don't move an inch," she whispered.

Riddle's stomach twisted. Was that ... his plan ...

"I have your final Horcrux," she said. "The only one that hasn't been destroyed. The only thing holding you to your miserable life, Voldemort. If I stab this, you're finished."

"You lie," he hissed, but his heart thudded hard. He could technically have an incorporeal form, if someone had destroyed his body. This cup could be the last vessel of his soul.

"Want to test it out?" she said, her voice escalating rapidly to a shriek. The words rang off the high ceiling, off Salazar Slytherin's unforgiving carved image. "You move one inch, you're dead!"

Riddle cursed inwardly. If he sent a spell at her, she might dodge, strike the cup. He couldn't take that chance - and he still couldn't tell if she was bluffing. Her face was smudged with filth, her expression unreadable. Could that really be the last Horcrux?

How would the others have been destroyed?

"If you're telling the truth, why have you not disposed of this before now?" he said, his eyes trained on hers.

"We were going to before you barged in. I won't do it if you let Ron down."

"Ah." Riddle's eyes flickered to the redheaded boy still pinned against Slytherin's statue. "Then we are at an impasse. You see, I do not wish to release Ron at all, as that provides your single incentive not to ruin that piece of advanced magic in your hand. And if I may explain: This is a nasty type of curse holding your friend. If I don't personally undo it, Ron's flesh will slowly peel from his bones, from toe to head."

A complete bold-faced lie - it was a pinning spell, hardly more Dark magic than the average Cheering Charm. But he could tell the girl was scared enough to believe it. Especially when the threat was delivered in his silky, persuasive tone.

"I'm going to walk toward you and take my wand from your pocket," said Hermione, her voice shaky yet defiant. "If you move, you're finished."

"Go on, then." Riddle didn't care about her having her wand back. If she wanted to use it properly, she'd have to put down the Horcrux, and then he could just kill her. She wouldn't be able to break his hold on the pinning spell, either, so he wouldn't relinquish any leverage.

She approached him with utmost caution, as if nearing a raging Erumpent. Sudden, murderous rage flowed through him as he stood immobile. Students could not be obstacles to _Tom Riddle_. This pathetic little Gryffindor should not have had an ounce of sway over his actions.

Her hands kept the fang pressed to the cup as she reached for his pocket. With the spare fingers on her cup hand, she lifted the wand.

Riddle could see the concentration on her face. All he really needed was to knock fang or Horcrux from her hand ... one sharp blow to the temple ...

He acted in a whirl, throwing out a fist.

Everything happened at once. She did not scramble away, as he'd expected - she threw herself into him, knocking him back. He overcompensated in his lunge, and his fist flew over her shoulder. The top of her head collided with his chin, snapping his jaw tight shut. He saw stars.

Through the swirl of disorientation, he saw her dig the fang into the cup.

Riddle let out an animal roar and shoved her forward. He slammed her against the Chamber wall with such force that the cup and fang, united in final partnership, flew from her hand. She gave a yell of pain.

The cup emitted a horrible screeching sound - it went on, on, _on_ - and clattered to the stone. Riddle felt the noise in his bones.

"No!" He could not die. _He could not die. _With one hand, he gripped the girl's throat. With the other, he dug his wand into her jaw. "_Avada_ -"

But he realized too late the other noise, the sound mingling with the shrieking of the cup.

A high-pitched whine.

Tom Riddle's heart stopped beating.

The girl's hand was still fisted in his pocket. Around her wand, but also around -

He thought to pull away. But then the _BANG -_ the deconstruction of the scene around them, the twisting of light and the stretching of the wind through their rent-and-dispersed-and-torturously-realigned molecules - _dammit, _they should have been dead; why were they not dead? -

The pain in her every pore leaked into his body through his fingers, which still clutched her small neck. Time and space crushed them together.

Her scream ripped up into his ear, and agony bound them in one twisting mass.

This time, he cupped his cry of anguish in his larynx, and he would not let it go.

Then she stopped touching the Timeglass. In the next instant, they were slamming into the stone floor.

**x**

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><p><strong>Thanks! Let me know you're here and reading along? :)<strong>

**Speechwriter**


	4. 2022

**Normal-sized chapter yay!**

**Thanks to lovely reviewers:**

**casey12, HazelFromBehind, NeverEndingFairyTales, MooMoo-of-Doom, TK Grimm, SnapesMistress005, le-femme-cavalier, Lost O'Fallon Girl, annaXbara, Shan84, Carina, Sleepwriting, Sachita, NS, ugottalongway2go, SexySpectrum, Lania26, EternityWithOutYou, riddle1rave, ShimmeringWater, Alassea Riddle, Annevader, Transreal Clouden, moor, Bandle, ShinyMarble, Weird-Chik2, ChildoftheLight, Valkyrie Evans, EmeraldGoddess52!**

**MooMoo-of-Doom: AHAHHa. Caught me - I totally forgot about that. *desperately compensates in this chapter***

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><p><strong>"this mind made war<strong>

**being generous**

**this heart could dare)**

**unhearts can less"**

**-E.E. Cummings**

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><p>i.<p>

"St - stupefy!" the girl yelled, staggering to her feet. As her eyes glinted, wild with pain, the wand in her grip shot a few feeble red sparks. She repeated the spell, non-verbally this time, but Tom had regained his grip on his wand and his wits. He rose in one swift motion, lashed out, and deflected her spell.

She lunged forward and grabbed his wand from his hand.

For a second, she just stared at the wand clutched in her fingers, like she couldn't believe that had actually worked.

Then she shot a Petrificus Totalus at the horrified Riddle. His arms snapped to his sides, his legs locked, and he hit the floor, his skull cracking painfully against the cold stone of the Chamber.

"All right, what did you do?" she snapped. "What the hell just happened? Where's Ron? What did you do with Ron?"

Riddle wished he had the capability to roll his eyes. Did this idiotic girl really expect an answer from the boy on whom she'd just cast the Full-Body Bind?

She flicked her wand, and ropes wrapped up his body. Then, with a quiet countercharm, the effects of the Petrificus receded. "Riddle, tell me this instant what you –"

Her eyes finally lit on the tremendous, bleached skeleton of the Basilisk, and she stepped back, the color draining from her face. "Merlin, that's – but it just … we were just here, it looked like it had just died –"

"Kindly stop stammering about the obvious."

Her mouth snapped shut. Her head whipped around so her glare could pierce into him more properly. "Where are we?" she hissed.

"We appear to be underground, in a large stone chamber."

Hermione's face twisted in rage. She slashed out her wand, and suddenly Riddle found himself ten feet in the air, dangling upside-down.

"I'm curious to see how long you can stay like that," the girl said through gritted teeth, obviously not curious at all. Riddle pursed his lips and waited.

But as much as he would have liked to believe otherwise, he was human. After a few agonizing minutes, his face glowed with blood, and he felt his eyes might pop from his skull. She could hold him there forever, but he wasn't sure how much longer it would be before he passed out. And if he did pass out, she could steal the Timeglass.

"You – touched the – Timeglass," he ground out.

At his words, she let him fall. Onto his face. "The what?"

"In my pocket," he said, wriggling onto his back. "The Timeglass."

"Never heard of it."

"It belongs to Gurdy Bansherwold," he said, fully expecting her to ask, Who? Those in Gryffindor robes never knew as much as they should.

"Gurdy Bansherwold," she repeated, but it wasn't a question. Her nose wrinkled. "Inventor of the Crippler and the Marrow-Boil."

He blinked a few times. "…your knowledge of Dark Magic is quite surpri–"

"But he died in 1947."

"And how exactly did you know –"

"He was in Age of Ages, and Watched Cauldrons Never Boil, and any number of other things. So, what, did you meet him? Did you steal this Timeglass thing from him, like you stole so many other people's prized possessions? I suppose you were the reason he vanished. I suppose you killed him and transfigured his body so no one would find his remains, like he wasn't one of the greatest theoretical minds of the last –"

"Wait. Vanished?"

The girl glared him down. "Gurdy Bansherwold died in 1947. How are you here?"

Riddle gritted his teeth. "The Timeglass has sent me forward in time twice now. Three times, if you count the mishap that just occurred."

"… the … what? Forward in time? To the future? But that's not possible. According to Henry's Laws of Continuity –"

"Yes, yes, silly girl, I know about Henry's Laws! The Timeglass functions opposite them."

"Why in hell's name would you actively pursue something like that?"

"It was supposed to slow time to a standstill. Not send me forward through it."

She rolled her eyes. "If it can slow time, of course it can yield temporal acceleration, too. What, did you think it would only break Henry's Laws in a single direction? Don't you know anything about the Chaotic Assonance Theory?"

He thought he might split his teeth, he was clenching them so hard. Oh, to have that wand back in his hand. As soon as she released him, she was dead.

"All right," she said. She crumpled to the floor beside him, staring at nothing in particular, wiping some dirt off her chin. "We can … we can figure this out. We can get back to our proper time."

Her eyes fell on him. "Or, rather, our proper times. You're from … when you were this age? Mid-nineteen-forties? So you're eighteen, nineteen?"

"If you're considering disposing of the young Lord Voldemort, I might remind you that my first Horcrux is safely back in my time. Your efforts will be fruitless."

The girl scowled, apparently peeved that her foolish plan was so transparent. "Where's your shoe, anyway?"

"In the 1940s."

She conjured him a new one. Then, stashing his wand in her pocket, she levitated him – right-side-up this time, fortunately – and moved him along.

"Is this really necessary?" he ground out.

"Silencio," was her response.

Riddle raged in silence, wishing she would step just a bit closer. As long as his wand was in close enough proximity, he could find an appropriate wandless spell to extricate himself from this humiliation.

They stopped before the massive entrance to the pipe, and the girl waved her wand. "Strata duro." Steep steps erupted along the edge of the pipe in a spiral in an echoing staccato.

Riddle found himself grudgingly relieved. For a Gryffindor, the girl seemed intelligent enough. At least he wasn't stuck in the future with some bumbling dimwit, someone who might go babbling about traveling through time to anyone who would listen. It would be easy to kill her as soon as he escaped, but until then, the state of affairs was satisfactory.

Climbing the steps seemed to take half an hour. At the top, the girl flicked her wand. "Confringo."

The spell bounced back. She leapt away with a sharp intake of breath.

Riddle shot her a contemptuous look over his shoulder. As if she could just blow up the entrance to Salazar Slytherin's chamber.

She flicked her wand in his direction, and he felt his voice unlock.

"Open it," she ordered.

It killed him to do as he was told, but he complied. As soon as the hiss left his mouth, she Silenced him again. With a wave of her wand, Riddle's captive body flew through the hole the second it slid open, an uncomfortable jolt.

His head collided with a girl's legs. She screamed and leapt away from the sink.

"Agatha!" she yelled, wild-eyed. "Bloody hell, is this one of your stupid tricks? Who is that?"

"Who is who?" came an indignant voice from one of the stalls. "Did one of those damned ghosts fly through the mirrors again?"

The girl shook her head, staring at Riddle as if he were some particularly mutated variety of Mandrake. Then Hermione clambered through the hole and called out, in what she probably thought was a soothing tone,

"It's all right, don't worry."

The girl paled even further. "What. Who are you. Where are you – it's closing!"

And indeed, the entrance to the Chamber was sliding shut again.

A toilet flushed, and Hermione froze mid-crawl as a tall girl with raven-black hair – Agatha, Riddle presumed – emerged from one of the stalls. "Honestly, what are you going on ab –"

As Agatha's eyes fell on Tom – bound and conspicuously male, he presented quite the distraction from regular bathroom activity – she froze in place. A dumbstruck look affixed itself to her features and did not let go.

The first girl, who had hair the color of flame, mouthed hopelessly, and finally settled on, "What is happening. They just crawled through a hole in the wall and now it's gone. Oh God what."

Hermione stood and brushed off her robes. She flicked her wand, lifting Riddle to a standing position, and he wriggled, nearly toppling.

"Cooperate," Hermione snapped at him, and then turned her attention back to the girls with a kinder look on her face. "Sorry about this. Do you think you could show us to the Headmaster?"

"Have you ever been to the Head's office?" said Agatha to her friend. "I haven't, I've no clue where it is." She looked back at Hermione. "Why's that boy tied up, by the way?"

"He's … done something sort of … illegal; I need to deliver him to the appropriate authority. And I know where the Head's office is, I just would like you to come with us, if you could," Hermione said. "He might want to ask us about that pipe. Under the sink. And it would help if you could corroborate our story."

Agatha and the other girl traded a dubious glance.

"Trust me?"

With the collective, simultaneous sigh that only best friends could muster, the two girls set out from the bathroom. Hermione led them, still levitating Riddle before them. As they passed a few students in the halls, Riddle bore the humiliating brunt of their mystified stares. His rage increased twentyfold.

"How old are you, by the way?" Hermione asked the girls.

"We're fourth-years," Agatha said. "I'm Agatha. This is Lily. Which year are you? I haven't seen you around before."

"You sure?" Lily said. "I feel like she looks … familiar, almost."

"We're seventh-years," Hermione said.

"And doesn't he talk?" Lily asked, jabbing a finger in Riddle's general direction.

"No. It was … an Acid Pop. Er, burned a hole through his tongue. You know."

"Ergh," Agatha said.

Lily nodded knowingly. "Almost happened to my Uncle Ron when he was a kid."

Hermione made a choking noise. "Uncle," she said. "Uncle Ron."

The redhead raised her thin eyebrows, appearing more disturbed by the millisecond. "…yes?"

"By the way, why are you covered in slime?" Agatha asked the still-choking Hermione.

"Aggie," Lily said.

"What? I'm just asking!"

"Long story," Hermione managed, as they headed up a shifting staircase. "Hold on, let me ..." She let Riddle fall on the steps and vacuumed the filth from her robes and face with her wandtip. "There."

Riddle glared death in her direction, but stayed where he'd landed, planning. He could plot an escape while the girl yammered away. For the millionth time, he tried a wandless Accio, but she was just out of the reach of his magic.

"I … hang on," Hermione said to Lily. "What's your last name, then?"

"Potter."

Hermione twitched involuntarily. Agatha laughed. "Are you sure you've been coming to this school for the last seven years? You'd have to be blind and deaf and possibly Confunded not to know all the Potter siblings."

"I hate it," Lily mumbled, her ears turning red. "It's stupid, us being famous or whatever it is. I didn't do anything to deserve it, Al didn't do anything, and James definitely didn't do anything."

"Except blow up half the Quidditch Pitch during that fun little prank he pulled with the exploding Bludgers." Agatha grinned. "Oh, man, I wish I'd been a part of that one."

"You and my brother are going to get married, I swear."

"James? Oh, that's disgusting, he's so old. Don't." Agatha fake-gagged, and then glanced back to Hermione. "I really can't see how you haven't known about at least James before now, though. You'd be able to catch a glimpse of his inflated ego from outer space, probably. And hold on, he's your year – shouldn't you be in some of his classes?"

"We were, erm, homeschooled before this year," Hermione said quickly. Riddle's lips twitched. She wasn't the most adept liar in delivery, but she'd chosen the same one as he had on the train.

"Oh," Agatha said. "Well, then. That explains it."

Lily looked closely at Hermione's dirt-free face. "You know, you do look rather familiar. I must have seen you around somewhere."

Riddle wriggled around a little, trying to slip back down the steps to the girls, but Hermione flicked her wand, lifting him again. They stepped off the staircase on the third floor, and Hermione led the party through the halls to the entrance to the Head's tower.

"Password?" said the gargoyle.

Hermione's face fell. "I … I don't know."

"E – excuse me, are you trying to see the Headma –" said a voice, but when Hermione turned around, the words cut off abruptly.

Tom eyed the man up and down. He wore Gryffindor robes, although the mulch covering his hands seemed to imply he was the Herbology professor. Odd – Gryffindors weren't usually inclined to that subject. What was happening to that house? Were the values of old changing as time went on?

Tom's eyes narrowed. The man looked … familiar, somehow. Where had Tom seen that face before?

The boy on the train! He took in a quick breath. That bumbling boy had turned into a professor? Still equally hapless, no doubt. Derision filled Tom to the brim, and he made a silent scoff in the back of his throat.

The professor tore his eyes from Hermione. "Stone sentry," he squeaked, and the gargoyle leapt aside. The two fourth-years leaned closer to it, seemingly fascinated by the simple reanimation charm. Riddle rolled his eyes.

As he floated up the spiral steps, the professor scurried around him and tapped on the door ahead. It swung open, admitting the motley party.

Under Dippet's regime, the office had had a single bookcase, a desk, a threadbare rug. The current Headmaster, however, had added to its décor somewhat. To Riddle's revulsion, Quidditch pennants dangled all over the walls, interspersed with articles from newspapers, not all in English. They surrounded the customary Headmaster portraits.

The man behind the desk had a beaky nose and sharp, heavy brows. Salt-and-pepper hair topped his sallow face. Riddle wasn't sure he liked the look of the man, and not just because of his inappropriate decorations. He looked shrewd; discerning, at the very least.

"Hullo, Neville," said the Headmaster, and Riddle recoiled further. A tinge of some old accent lingered around the edge of the man's voice. What was Hogwarts doing pulling in foreigners for Headmasters? Were they really at such a deficit that they felt the need to import people from other countries?

Then Hermione came in at the end of the party. As soon as she noticed the Headmaster, she made yet another stupid-sounding noise. Riddle shook his head. Why hadn't she cast Silencio on herself instead of him, if she had this incapability to stop making an idiot of herself?

She let his body down into a chair with a flick of her wand. The bindings slackened, tightened, adjusting themselves to strap him to the seat.

"What brings you here this afternoon, Longbottom?" the Headmaster asked, but then his eyes fell on Hermione, and his sharp jaw drifted downward.

Neville blabbered, seemingly oblivious to the Head's obvious discomfort. "I was – er, I was going to tell you the Duckweeds are almost ready to lay their eggs. They should be ready the first week of October. But those are Class B Trade-Restricted Materials, so we'd need to get one of the Ministry's supervisors to give us a permit to sell –"

"Neville, could you … I'm sorry, but …" The Headmaster still stared at Hermione, as if she'd grown a third eye. "This, I think, is urgent."

"Right. Right you are." Neville shifted from foot to foot. "So you also …? I thought I was just imagining … I mean, but she does look just like …"

"Hold on," Hermione said loudly. "All right. Firstly, I just want to ask Agatha and Lily to tell you how we got here."

Agatha fidgeted. "Well, Lils saw it, not me."

"They crawled out of the wall," said Lily, deadpan. "In the girls' bathroom. Second floor."

To Riddle's suspicion, Longbottom's face darkened, as if he knew what that meant. As if he knew where … but how could that be common knowledge? Were knowledge of the Basilisk's demise and the Chamber's whereabouts circulating the public arena? Surely not.

"All right. Thank you," said the Headmaster gravely, standing. He stood hunched, his body athletically built. "That will do."

"That it? Bye, then," Agatha said, sounding almost affronted. She and Lily hurried out.

As soon as the door shut, chaos set in.

"Hermione?" said Neville, rounding on her. "Is that you? What have you done to yourself? You look like you're eighteen again! You're dressed like a student! Why are you dressed like a student? For heavens' sake!"

"Please, Neville," said the Headmaster, raising a hand.

"Neville? Viktor?" Hermione said, her voice quiet steel. The Headmaster's expression twisted oddly. "I … I need your help."

Neville raised his hands in surrender, his face pale. "Please just tell me there's some explanation for this. Who's that, in the chair?"

"I don't think I should say. But we've been … sort of sent forward in time. You see, he has a –"

And that was when the second Tom Riddle burst from the air in front of them.

ii.

Hermione wanted to scream. What was going on? Who was this second Riddle, and how had he broken the anti-Apparition wards? But she hardly had time to think, which terrified her in itself. She was so busy shooting spells into the fray – and dodging others – that she couldn't process a thing.

By the end of the first volley, both of the Riddles had wands in their hands, Krum wore a dripping gash across his forehead, and Neville had been knocked unconscious. As for Hermione, she had somehow ended up with the Timeglass balanced in the crook of her arm, nestled in her robes. She fumbled it into her pocket and wove the opening shut with a quick Tenebrium.

They stood at an impasse.

"Who are you?" demanded one of the Riddles.

The face of the other contorted in instant rage. "Who am I? You imbecile, you obviously know who I am, or you wouldn't be impersonating me."

"Impersonating you? A ridiculous accusation. I am the true Tom Marvolo Riddle."

"How dare you use that name! Refer to me by my proper title, or –"

"How did you know I hate my name?" hissed the other.

"Stupefy!" Hermione yelled. Red light whizzed from her wand. Mistake – both Riddles rounded on her at once.

She flung herself behind a chair just as two nasty-looking counterspells collided in midair with a strange fizzling pop.

"Avada Ke –" said one voice, but then the other said,

"Wait."

"What is it?"

Hermione snuck out from behind the chair. The two boys faced each other, wearing identical glares.

"He didn't say you'd be here," said one of the Riddles.

"Who didn't say?"

"Me."

"What?" said the Riddle to the right.

The Riddle to the left, the one holding the ivory wand, folded his arms idly. Hermione didn't know whether to trust the wand's ownership … they could easily have been switched. Each Riddle eyed the wand in the other's hand, though with suspicion or possessiveness she couldn't discern.

"I meant," ivory-Riddle said, "the version of myself I happened to meet several days ago did not warn me of this encounter."

"The 'version of yourself'," repeated the Riddle with the dark wand. "By 'yourself', do you mean me, or whoever _you_ truly are? Since you are most assuredly not me?"

"Of course I'm not you; you're an imposter. Of course, neither of us is really ourselves at the moment. You, and I, and the iterations of ourselves created by the infinite loop contained in the device in that girl's pocket – we are all affected by the wash of time."

"If you start insinuating that you and I are equal in the eyes of some big picture, I shall be glad to prove otherwise –"

"Ah, but Tom, we are equal. Am I not Tom? Are you not Tom?"

"ENOUGH!" roared Krum. All eyes snapped to him.

The Headmaster's wand shook. "Get out," he said, his accent much more noticeable in his state. "You two men. Or I vill haff you removed."

"Viktor," Hermione said, her chest tightening. "Please – I … I need them." And if he forced her to leave … what was she supposed to do without the support of Hogwarts? What could she do without this sanctuary's support?

"Herm-own-ninny." Krum's eyes softened. "They must leaf, at vonce. This is for the Department of Mysteries to handle. Doctoring vith time is not my division. I vill not ask you to leaf, of course, but who are these men? I do not know!"

"I – they're just –"

"What do you want? Why are you here?" seethed one of the Riddles to the other, ignoring the torn look on Krum's face, the desperation in Hermione's eyes.

The Riddles' gazes dueled. "Theoretically," said one, "you could be me a few days in the future, having rewound time to this moment."

"Then it would be to your disadvantage to murder me."

A light sneer from ivory-Riddle. "I suppose." He pocketed his wand. "I shall allow you to live because I cannot be sure that you did not simply lose your wand from carelessness. Though I can hardly believe such a thing of myself."

"Were I you, I might have the intellect to infer that extenuating circumstances occurred," said dark-wand Riddle. "I demand that you return my wand. At once."

"Get out," said Krum, his voice exhausted. "Get out now."

A long silence.

Then one of the Riddles snapped into action. He snatched the small jar of Floo powder from the mantle, dumped the entire thing in the fireplace, and said, "Piazza San Pietro."

As green flames swallowed the grate, Riddle grabbed his counterpart, caught Hermione by the arm, and lunged forward. He took them all toppling into the fire, and tingles engulfed their bodies. Hermione caught a mouthful of ash and retched, her head spinning, her eyes watering.

They burst out atop a grate that had been conjured an hour before for this purpose only. They burst out in the middle of a crowd that had its heads bowed. They burst out in the middle of the Pope's delivery of the Lord's Prayer.

A thousand eyes turned on them.

Then the cameras swiveled to face the trio, and millions of eyes watched in fascination.

One of the Riddles gave a truly evil smirk and a mocking bow. "You're welcome," he said. "I'll see you later."

Then he pulled the wands out of his pocket. Hermione's. Riddle's. The dark, unidentified one.

Both Hermione and Riddle gave a desperate grab for the wands. But it was too late.

The false Riddle rose up into the air, and with a massive burst of blue light, vanished into thin air.

iii.

A split second before the mob started to erupt in chaos, Hermione and Riddle ran for it. Matching each other step for step, they flung themselves down the nearest alley.

"The Timeglass," Riddle said. "Use the Timeglass. They'll be after us –"

Hermione jerked a thumb over her shoulder, trying to ignore the pounding of a horde's feet. "They already are after us, if you haven't noticed!"

"Just get it out of your pocket."

"I sealed my pocket up so you wouldn't Accio the damn thing –"

Still running, he stooped, snatched up a piece of rock from the pavement, and handed it to her. "There, you incompetent –"

"Shut up!" She stumbled out of the run, gouged the rock into her robes so hard she cut her thumb, and grabbed the Timeglass with her bloody hand, yanking it from her pocket.

"Don't hold onto it – contact time is proportional to the years traveled," Riddle said, seizing her other hand.

She cursed and dropped the Timeglass immediately. But something strange happened. When Hermione let go, the Timeglass hovered in the air. Smears of blood sank deep into it like delicate tree roots, glistening and glowing.

"Oh, no," Hermione murmured. "What is it doing?"

Tom Riddle had nothing to say to that. But panic gripped him in a cold rush. Why hadn't the Timeglass taken them yet? It didn't require a wand, did it? The whine was taking so long to build – the crowd was nearly upon them –

"Dammit!" he spat, and flicked the Timeglass hard. His nail rang with pain, and the crystal flipped over and over.

Then, to his horror, it reversed itself, spun in directions that did not match his action at all.

He grabbed it, made it stop. At his touch, the whine reached its peak.

Then the bang.

The tearing pain.

The landing.

x

x

x

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><p><strong>"If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren't for that dreadful magic staff, you'd never know how much time you were wasting."<strong>

**-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tolbooth**

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><p><strong>Reviews bring joy to my heart! (and updates to your life!)<strong>

**Thanks for reading!**

**Speechwriter**


	5. 2036, pt 1

**Back! Sorry for the mini-hiatus. This is tough to write, and shit in the real world has been like OH HEY.**

**Thanks to lovely reviewers:**

**seniorforayear07, River, Darren Jaguar, Lost Soul Here, marana1, AlmostExistentExistentialist, timunderwood9, dab-of-paint, Holden Caulfield, Dr. Shanty, Andelevion, J, NeverEndingFairyTales, Allie Riddle, Lania26, ZuzuManiac, Sleepwriting, ShimmeringWater, Sachita, Zombie Reine, ugottalongway2go, Smithback, depth-of-a-labyrinth, Annevader, silver screen icon, Valkyrie Evans, Weird-Chik2, HazelFromBehind -**

**oh, and by the way, to everyone who commented on the confusingness of the last chapter... don't worry, it was intentional. Sometimes I find that when I'm reading and I get confused, it's satisfying to get it cleared up. Though that might just be me. Just me? mk. XD**

**ANYWAY hope you enjoy -**

**speechwriter**

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><p><strong>"How did it get so late so soon?"<strong>

**-Dr. Seuss**

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><p>Riddle scrambled to his feet, his head whirling. To his extreme humiliation, he lurched into a nearby alley, doubled over, and threw up.<p>

Straightening, he wiped his mouth with a trembling hand and looked around. The moon sat high in the black sky; Hermione lay crumpled in a heap on the deserted street.

Riddle searched his pockets, but found the Timeglass noticeably absent.

He strode to the still-unconscious lump of Gryffindor and rolled her over with a nudge of his foot. The Timeglass fell from her pocket.

Riddle knelt, snatching the crystal up with his robes over his hand. But a searing pain lashed his fingers, even through the cloth. He dropped the glass with a yelp.

He stared at his fingertips, which were tinged raw red with a burn.

No.

She'd spilt her blood on it … it hadn't formed a Villinger's Bond with her, had it? Could magic that powerful bond to someone so clearly unworthy?

If that were the case, he had to break the bond. Lord Voldemort, unable to touch the very object that would bring him supremacy? Unthinkable.

Riddle's lip lifted in a snarl. "Worthless scum," he spat, jamming his toe into the girl's ribs. She jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath and scrambled away, anger instantly twisting her features.

"Where are we?" she demanded.

"Why did you spill your blood on it?"

"I – what?"

"The Timeglass. You bled all over –"

"As if I was trying t–!"

"Do you have any idea of the consequences of your actions?"

Her mouth opened in disgust. "Do _you _know the consequences of _yours,_ you hypocrite?"

Riddle turned away, seething. "Come along. And bring the Timeglass; I can no longer touch it."

He realized he needn't have said anything. When he'd dropped the crystal, it had replaced itself in her pocket.

It _was_ a Villinger's bond, a bond of permanent belonging. Damn it all, why hadn't he formed one to himself while he'd had the chance?

"Get up," he spat. "Don't make me repeat myself."

"Or what, you'll threaten me? I'm sorry to have to be the practical one here, but the fact that neither of us has a wand is clearly the issue at hand, not your insufferable narcissism."

Riddle made for her, but she was on her feet and darting away before he could decide which part of her body to break. He forced himself to stop on his warpath and take a deep breath.

"This way," he said, storming past her.

"You've no idea where you're going. That's back to St. Peter's Basilica."

"Are you familiar with the area, then?"

"Reasonably."

His pride warred with his sensibility for a long moment. "Fine," he said, at last. "Get us out. Get us to the nearest possible place we can steal a wand."

"Or –" The girl reached deep into her pocket and yanked out a small, beaded bag. "We could simply buy one."

Of course she would have a _purse._ Girls had no sense of pragmatism. With a scoff, Riddle stalked down the street. "If you happen to know the exact location of the nearest wand store, by all means, enlighten me."

"Give me a minute, and I'll tell you."

He cast a look over his shoulder and stopped in his tracks. Hermione was rummaging through the pages of a large, leather-bound tome. Where in hell's name had that come from?

"Italy… here we are." She stopped walking, her brow furrowing. "Venice … no, that's not … here! Rome." Rotating the book, she took the lead. "This is good," she said, as if to remind herself. "We're not far. We can get out of this. Yes, we can do this."

Riddle swept behind her, emitting all the cheer of an active volcano.

They emerged from their nook into a street lined with tall clay buildings. Strange blue lines ran down the center of the asphalt street, glowing. A healthy stream of tourists milled down the narrow sidewalks, despite it clearly being the middle of the night.

Riddle expected strange glances due to their robes. He expected some muttering and some Muggle suspicion.

He did not suspect a pointed finger and a scream from the first woman to see them: "Look!"

"Polizia," came the shout from a vast blond man.

Another shout: "Someone grab them!"

Riddle would have run right then had he not remembered the girl had the Timeglass. In a split second, she bundled the book into her bag – was that an Undetectable Extension Charm? – and he shoved her forward into a sprint.

They dashed down the center of the road as a couple Muggles made grabs for them. Why would these Muggles be clamoring for their blood? Hadn't years passed since the event in the square? How the hell did this many people recognize them?

Then a circular silver vehicle came whizzing down the road, its bottom hovering an inch above the glowing blue line.

Hovering.

Did Muggles have _Hover Charms_? What was happening?

Tom and Hermione barreled off the road just in time to miss the vehicle, which whirred to a halt next to them. The witch and wizard collided with a couple Muggles, who screamed.

The pair struggled through the Muggles' grasping hands and dove back into a run. Tom spared a glance back.

The silver vehicle's top slid open, and out leapt two men in black uniforms. "Attenzione!" yelled one, his voice amplified somehow. _A_ _Sonorus charm could do that, _Riddle thought, _but how the hell –_

Hermione grabbed his arm and yanked him forward, away from a Muggle inches from grabbing him by the collar. "Almost there," she panted. "Come on, hurry –"

Riddle didn't think he'd ever sprinted this quickly. His chest burned and ached; he felt lit to the fingertips with adrenalin.

They burst from the narrow street into a massive intersection. Riddle's breath caught in his throat. Multitudes of the silvery disklike vehicles zipped by, darting down the blue lines as if they weighed nothing at all. Torrents of Muggles poured down the broad sidewalks.

Again, someone noticed them.

"WIZARDS!" came the yell.

Hermione and Tom traded a look of shock. In that instant, they were no longer divided. They were stricken by identical horror, tied by identical fear. _How?_

"Go," he hissed, breaking the trance. Hermione darted across the intersection toward a white stone bridge, and he followed.

A hand seized the back of Riddle's robes. He turned and slammed a fist into the face of the Muggle holding him. His victim crumpled to the pavement.

"Riddle!" said Hermione's voice. He turned and found her teetering on the edge of the bridge, a millisecond from jumping. "Up! Get up!"

"Basta," roared a voice from behind Riddle, just as he pulled himself onto the bridge beside Hermione.

Something, like an insect's sting, bit the back of his neck.

Darkness rocketed toward him and swallowed his vision in one swift rush. He felt his body topple into the girl's, felt them both fall through the air toward the water.

Then nothing.

oOo

He woke up in a bed with Hermione sitting next to him. She held a thin wooden wand.

"Where are we?" he said, looking around. The room was small, plain, overwhelmingly wooden. Lit by the glow of morning.

"We're at an inn in Lagunia," said Hermione, sitting back.

"The Wizarding Roman marketplace?"

"Yes. And I've found out what's been going on."

"Explain."

"It's the year 2036," she said. "After that incident with the three of us in St. Peter's Square, there was international uproar. You see, a video of us leaked onto the internet –"

"What's video? And the internet?"

"Video is like a visual record of an event. Like a Pensieve. And the internet… it's a type of Muggle technology. It enables all Muggles around the world to communicate instantly with each other."

Tom stared at her. But even wizards couldn't do that. "They all saw this "video" at the same time?"

"I haven't quite figured it out yet, but it seems that once something is on this 'internet' thing, all Muggles can go back and access it whenever they'd like. In any case, it was too big to contain, too big to explain away. They couldn't possibly Obliviate every Muggle who saw the video, or who read the news reports." Hermione sighed, kneading her forehead.

"And in terms of our current situation, this means…"

"Well, it's been fourteen years since the incident. In that time, Muggles have pursued wizardry with incredible tenacity… and they've found a few Wizarding families, a few Wizarding areas." Hermione shook her head. "What it means is that any wizards who are caught by Muggles get interrogated and experimented on by Muggle scientists."

"Why the hell –"

"Because, Riddle. Muggles have an inherent need to explain away everything they don't immediately understand. They believe they can figure out the source of magic, apparently, with science."

"Bloody Merlin." Riddle got out of bed, his head reeling. "Let's get back to London. Let's find someone who can –"

"I'm not finished."

He rolled his eyes, but held his tongue.

"We need disguises for whenever we're in Muggle areas," said Hermione. "Residential areas across the globe have started undergoing random screenings for wizardry. If they catch even the slightest hint…"

"What? If they catch a hint, then what?"

"Unless you'd like to be subjected to excruciating medical tests," she said, arching an eyebrow, "I suggest you do your best to blend in."

The very phrase made him taste sour resentment. _Blend in._ As if wizards should have to hide from filthy Muggles. "And amidst all this," he said, "have you found out whether we have a way back to our respective times?"

She beckoned. They exited the room into a long hallway, headed down some rickety stairs, and emerged in a comfortably old-fashioned lobby. "Unfortunately," Hermione said, "it seems as if the Wizarding populace has been rather too preoccupied with other events to focus much energy on time magic. You do realize the Statute of Secrecy, in essence, has been rendered null?"

Riddle's lips tightened. It was sacrilegious, Muggles everywhere knowing of wizards' existence.

"But you're right – we should head to London," Hermione muttered, rummaging in her bag. "I daresay someone there might be able to help us."

Hermione placed a couple Galleons on the counter, grabbed his arm, and they Apparated.

The whirl landed them in the center of Diagon Alley. Hermione instantly strode forward, past storefronts that didn't seem to have aged a day, through gaggles of young wizards yapping about the newest model of broomstick. Thank God, some things retained hints of normalcy.

"Where are you going?" Riddle said.

"Just wait. I know the person to ask."

To Riddle's horror, they stopped in front of what appeared to be a joke shop. Its displays fizzed, popped, let out loud and obnoxious noises. "_This_ is your grand solution?" he said.

Hermione ignored him and entered.

Behind the counter stood a lean, middle-aged man, whose patches of fire-red hair were few and far between.

When he saw Hermione, he blinked a few times, shook his head, and rubbed his eyes.

Riddle and Hermione approached the counter.

"Fred?" said Hermione.

The man looked like he'd been struck. He reeled for a second. "I … no, it's George, I …" A crease settled between his eyebrows. "No one's talked about Fred for years."

Riddle felt uncomfortable. Hermione's face had gone white. "Fred. He's not …?"

"Hermione," George said. "Hold on. MARTIN!"

A pale, pudgy boy stumbled out from the back room. "Yes, Mr. Weasley, sir?"

"It's George, how many times do I have to – man the counter, will you?"

"Yessir!"

George beckoned Riddle and Hermione into the back. They settled amidst stacks of boxes and crates.

"Look, George," Hermione said quietly, "I'm sorry. I didn't know about… I didn't mean to…"

"Well, it's been almost forty years." A hollow glint entered George's eyes. "God. You told me this would happen about six months ago, I thought you were joking. You're really here … you're really you."

Hermione choked on her breath. Forty years? Fred had died almost forty years ago? Had she missed it by mere months, weeks, days? Or worse, mere hours? "Fred. Fred's … no …"

George put a hand on her back. "I'm sorry. It'll be all right, Hermione. Scars fade."

She stared at her hands. Everything felt removed in this light, forty years from where she was supposed to be. This old George, with the world-weary look in his eye… and dear Lord, what would it be like to see herself?

George cleared his throat. "So how are you … er, how are you here, exactly? You told me your younger self would come, but you didn't say how."

Hermione pushed her robes over her hand and extracted the Timeglass. "This thing sends you forward in time."

"And who's he?" George nodded to Riddle.

"You don't want to know."

George raised an eyebrow, shifting on his crate. "Er, all right. You told me you'd be looking for yourself…?"

"Yes, that's right. That's why I'm here – I need to find myself."

He cracked a familiar grin. His younger self shone through the wrinkles, and Hermione felt a painful tug at her heart. "Bit existential, that," George said.

"I meant in the literal sense."

"Right, right, I know. Well, you've just retired a couple months ago, so odds are you'll be at home with Ickle Ronnie."

"I … I married Ron, then?"

"Right. Forgot you wouldn't know that." George scratched at his freckled jaw. "This is very odd. You don't know anything that's been happening, do you?"

"We've heard," Riddle said stiffly. George jumped, as if he'd forgotten Riddle was sitting there.

"I suppose I'll Floo you two over to your place, Hermione. You'll be a right sight better at explaining everything than I would be." George got to his feet and started shifting boxes, revealing an old fireplace. "This thing should still be connected, though you may have to deal with a couple spiderwebs."

"Thank you, George."

"Anything. Good luck – I know you'll get back to our time safely. Because, you know, it's already happened."

Relief swirled over Hermione for a split second. That was true – if she'd married Ron, if no one had noticed her disappearance, she had to have returned safely.

Unless the timeline were to be altered…

With another grin, George pulled a packet of Floo powder from inside his garishly neon jacket and emptied it into the grate. "185, Skegma Circle."

Riddle and Hermione stepped in and whirled away.

When they stumbled out of the fireplace, Hermione felt a sudden pain in her chest.

Hermione Jean Granger sat on the sofa, her face baggy with age, wrinkles collated around the lines of her kind eyes.

"Ah, hello there," she said, looking up from her book. "I thought this might be the day. I seemed to recall it was a few months after I retired."

Hermione could manage little more than a nod.

"And Tom," Hermione the Elder said, getting to her feet and brushing herself off. "This is while you're still in your headstrong phase, doubtless."

"Phase?" he said, eyeing the older Hermione's appearance with distaste. "What, shall I enter another, then?"

"Well, you'll see, I suppose," Hermione said. She turned to her younger self, who still stood stiff and white as a pine board. "Calm down, Hermione. I know it's strange, but the more quickly you get used to this, the more time we'll have to speak. And we don't have much time, so calmness is imperative."

"Sorry. It's just a little much. Professor McGonagall always said not to interact with … and you're just …"

"Well," Hermione the Elder said, "firstly, do get changed - I seem to remember you'll be needing Muggle disguises." She bustled into the hall and returned a minute later with two changes of clothes.

Hermione the Younger hurried back into the hall and pulled on the dark jeans and the white t-shirt. They felt foreign - she hadn't worn Muggle clothes since before they'd started their hunt for the Horcruxes.

She emerged back into the living room as Tom came in from the kitchen, pulling his black belt tight.

Hermione the Younger didn't miss how the elder's eyes lingered on Tom's profile with something like wistful recollection. And something cold curled up in the younger's stomach. She wouldn't form some sort of friendship with the Dark Lord, would she? They were here through association, through the machinations of Gurdy Bansherwold's dark magic. The most they would achieve was a temporary alliance. Of that much, she was practically sure.

"Here," said Hermione the Elder. "Have a seat, and I'll try explaining a few things. The sofa. Both of you."

As her older self strode to the kitchen – still, to Hermione's relief, unencumbered by the creaky movements of age – she sat down on the sofa. Tom lowered himself into the seat beside her, taking in the apartment.

It was a small place, furnished in clean modernism, right angles and glass all around. Bookshelves adorned every wall in sight. Everything seemed perfectly functional, and photographs here and there smattered the place with life and memories.

Hermione stared at a photo, one with her own aging face. "Oh, dear," she murmured.

She hated having seen it already.

This was why she hated Divination, if she were to be truthful with herself. The idea of the mystery in the future fascinated her, intrigued her. And now that the surprise had been ruined…

"You're displeased with this future, I daresay," Tom said, with a careless glance around. "As I would be."

"Be quiet," she snapped. "Your postulates have no place here."

His lip curled, and he drew his wand. Toyed with it, unnecessary menace in his expression.

Hermione the Elder emerged with tea, her wand sticking out of her pocket. Her true wand, the one Hermione the Younger had last seen in the false Tom Riddle's fist before he'd vanished.

"Oh, good," Hermione said. "I get my wand back, then. How?"

The elder Hermione sighed. "I'm afraid I can't tell you much."

"Why? Is it because of my duplicate?" Tom said. "Who was that?"

"Who do you think?" Hermione the Elder said, arching a graying eyebrow in Tom's direction. "Someone who knows you. Someone who's long known you, known you would meddle with time to achieve your own ends."

"Dumbledore?"

"No, no. Far from it, I'm afraid." Hermione the Elder sipped her tea.

"Gurdy Bansherwold, then."

Hermione the Elder inclined her head.

"He's here?" Hermione the Younger said, frowning. "How? If Riddle took the Timeglass from him in 1947 and came to the future … he'd need to have the Timeglass _after_ that point to know to pretend to be Riddle. And it's formed a Villinger's Bond with me. It can't leave me, can it? So unless he's got a duplicate, or –"

"Here's what you need to know," Hermione the Elder said, setting her tea down. "You've come in at a dangerous point in time. Tensions are developing far beyond where they should have. All efforts at containing the knowledge of the Wizarding World have failed, and we've come to accept that."

"Muggles can levitate," Tom said.

"Of all the things to fixate on," Hermione the Younger said, rolling her eyes.

The Elder half-smiled. "No. They can't levitate. They can hover – it's science. But that's entirely beside the point. You two are in a very unique sort of danger."

"How so?"

"I can't tell you anything you're supposed to do, because in an attempt to fulfill a timeline, one often ends up altering it," Hermione the Elder said. "But I can tell you facts and circumstantial evidence. One: You are up against a man whose sanity is entirely intact. He is a deceiver of magnificent proportions, and he is an expert at utilizing both Muggle and Wizard disguise. Be careful. Two: You are up against a man who will always – _always – _be one step ahead of you. In fact, he should be on his way here right now in order to facilitate his own arrival in the past."

She glanced at the clock. 12:47, Hermione saw.

"Oh, dear. I really don't have much time, do I?" Hermione the Elder bit her lip. Took a shaky breath. "Three: Your biggest enemy will be underestimation. Firstly, you will underestimate every one of your opponents. Not just you, Tom – you'll do it too, Hermione. And secondly, you will underestimate yourselves. I can't ask you to prevent this, but I can warn you of it."

Hermione the Younger stood, gripping her new dark wand tightly in her hand. "How do I get back to my time? Please."

Hermione the Elder stood too. "I can't say. Please don't be upset, or rash. You'll have to go in a few minutes, regardless. But know that, at this point in my life, I am happy, and I am satisfied."

Puzzled, Hermione opened her mouth again, trying to decide what to say. Too many questions swarmed her mind for her to pick just one. This older Hermione might have been satisfied, but she most certainly was not.

Then Gurdy Bansherwold stepped out of the air before them.

Riddle stood, now, his brain barreling through the information presented him. If Bansherwold had come here to reclaim a method for time reversal, he'd be here to take the Timeglass. And in doing so, he'd present them with the way to turn back the clock – if they could keep their eyes on him. Riddle couldn't let him Disapparate, couldn't let him vanish with the Timeglass. Though, by all rights, the Villinger's bond…

Bansherwold was young, blond, handsome. He had sharp, almost feline eyes, and an air of determined calm.

"Alengurd," said Hermione the Elder, a deep pain in her eyes, still bright with knowledge even through a sheen of rheum. "Alen. Here again, are you?"

"I do suppose this would be hard to forget," said Gurdy. He lifted his wand. "And I do hope you'll forgive me."

"I've long forgiven you," Hermione the Elder murmured.

And somehow, Hermione the Younger knew what was going to happen long before he uttered the words. Long before the green light glared through the room.

She felt it in her chest, the ricochet, the plunge of the knife. Hermione the Elder's dead body struck the floor across the room, and Hermione the Younger staggered. Alengurd Bansherwold caught her in his arms. "You'll thank me," he whispered. "I promise."

Then he drew the Timeglass from her pocket and set her shocked, shaking body back on its feet.

"Merlin," Hermione whispered, her extremities cold and nerveless. "Oh my God. I'm … you just …"

The dead Hermione Granger's graying hair was strewn across her face. Her eyes were open, her lips slackening from their last semi-smile. The Villinger's bond had broken.

"Stop," Riddle murmured, breaking the eerie silence. "Stop!"

Hermione looked back to Bansherwold, who was holding the Timeglass out in his hand. "Make me stop," he said, and his eyes met Riddle's with cold defiance. "I'd like to see you try it, Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Riddle knew what was happening. This young Bansherwold – the Bansherwold of the 19th century – was stealing the later version of the Timeglass so he could return. So he could give the duplicate Timeglass to himself in 1947, after Riddle had fled to the future.

The 1947 version of Bansherwold, who had Tom's hair and his shoe.

The other Tom Riddle. Of course.

Riddle cursed and flung himself forward, but met no resistance from Bansherwold's body. He'd become incorporeal, an image fractured by motes of dust and light. "How?" Tom breathed. "Tell me how to go back!"

"Allow me to explain. First you have to be comfortable with anonymity," Bansherwold said. "Then you have to fall in love with it. Then you have to become it, and then … then you will have the control you seek."

"I need to go back, _I need to be back –"_

"Yes. And for that, what you need is to _understand_," Bansherwold whispered. "Power is something that belongs to the men who have no name. The feeling that has no name. The world that has no name."

"Everyone will know my name!" Riddle said. "Everyone will fear it."

"If that is your goal, you will never return. You will never harness the potential of this object."

Bansherwold held up the Timeglass and flickered out of the room. Out of 2036.

A terrible silence swallowed up Hermione's ears. Riddle looked stricken and furious. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he hissed. "A state of mind cannot change the magical properties of an object!"

"Explain the Patronus Charm, then," Hermione said, but her voice was hollow. Alengurd Bansherwold had promised her that she'd thank him for murdering her. Why? What in hell's name was the alternative?

"We need to go," Riddle said. "We need to find the other Bansherwold."

"If there were another in this time, he would have used his Timeglass. He wouldn't have had to steal ours."

Riddle shook his head, pacing. He hated to admit it, but speaking aloud to this girl was helping him think. Time magic had never been his main concern, and it stretched him. "By this point, Bansherwold has returned from 1947, and the older version of himself has orchestrated that St. Peter's fiasco fourteen years ago. He is now, presumably, back in this time at this very instant. Which means there are now two Gurdy Bansherwolds here, and one of them has a Timeglass with our name on it. Stop thinking like a Gryffindor."

"Why would he not simply skip over this year?"

"Skipping time is imprudent when one has plans to fulfill and limited time in which to achieve them."

"Plans? What plans?"

"You've read his treatises, I presume," Riddle said. "He was ambitious. _Is_ ambitious. He wouldn't be in the future if not for a specific purpose."

"Everything I've read said he went to the future to save his lost love –"

"And ended up losing his mind, yes, yes. Silly theory. A great Dark Wizard does not love."

Hermione tore her eyes from her fallen body. _You'll thank me. I promise. _"What would he be doing now, then? If you're such an expert?"

"Mobilizing forces."

"But … he just said that anonymity –"

"Are you claiming to know more about motives for world domination than I do?" Riddle said.

Hermione clutched her wand tight in her fist. "No. But his view and yours clearly differ. He just said you didn't understand what was fundamental to his invention. He said you need to understand anonymity."

"Bloody fantastic. Where would we hunt for him, then?"

"Well, the other me said that he can disguise himself as both wizard and Muggle. Which means I've seen him as both. So a Muggle version of him may be what we're looking for."

"We need to remove ourselves from the premises," Riddle muttered. "They'll think we've killed you. Come on."

"Where?"

"Somewhere we can think about this."

Hermione eyed the young Dark Lord uneasily. "Are we at an impasse, then? A truce?"

"It seems we have larger issues at hand than a petty feud."

"This feud is not _petty_. You will come to wage a war on me and everyone like me. Fifty years from your current age, you'll try to murder me and all my best friends, remove Muggle-borns from society. I have no small prejudice against you, Riddle, so don't try and diminish it."

"Noted. But you seem… prudent enough." He pursed his lips. "And as such, I'm sure you'll have the ability to set said prejudice aside whilst we attempt to work our way through a dilemma far larger than, I'm sure, either of us has faced previously."

Her eyes flickered back to her corpse. "I … the countryside, then? Where?"

He took her arm and twisted them into Apparition. Hermione's head whirled with the disorientation of the Side-Along, and in the flood of images, she caught one last snatch of her dead eyes. Her dead and graceless face.

What would Ron do when he arrived home?

What could he do, really?

They landed in a field surrounded by a dome of sky. Hermione sat on a boulder, and Riddle resumed his pacing.

"We need a plan," Hermione said briskly, taking out her beaded bag, trying to shunt away the thoughts of her death. Everything seemed finite, all of a sudden. Every moment, every second, was all too brief. She could count down to her death…

"A plan. Yes," Riddle said. "A plan to locate Bansherwold, first of all."

"Will he be meddling with us again? Were we just supposed to be his couriers, or something, for the second Timeglass?" Hermione closed her eyes, rummaging in her bag for a vial. "You'd think he'd be done, now that he has a second version of himself to do all his own bidding."

"Why doesn't he want us to go back?" Tom murmured. "By all rights, we're an inconvenience out here."

"Maybe he needs us for something."

"He can't force me to do anything for him."

"Given the Imperius Curse, I'm sure he could," Hermione said. "The question is what he needs us for."

Riddle stared up at the clouds. The combined magical capacity of Tom Marvolo Riddle and Alengurd Bansherwold was fearsome, doubtless. And Granger could be a useful pawn, at the least…

"Are you magically talented?" he demanded, rounding on her.

"I … what?"

"Is your intelligence incidental, or applied? You have a decent head on your shoulders; one can easily deduce from your conversation that despite being flustered with far too much ease you're intelligent. My question is whether or not you've been able to put that to use in your magical career." He eyed her bag. "Did you apply that Undetectable Extension Charm yourself?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's a start. What else is within your reach? Have you mastered Occlumency?" He stared into her brown eyes and caught flickers of memory beyond them. "Evidently not. That's disappointing."

"I haven't trained in Occlumency. I've only learned the theory behind it; I haven't put it into practice or –"

"Nonsense," Riddle said, twirling his wand. "For those such as us, theory is practice." He gave her a satisfied nod. "In any case, I think we can conclude either of us would be useful to Bansherwold in one way or another, which means we'll have to stay safely concealed."

Hermione bit her lip. "We'll have to stop Apparating, then."

"Why?"

"You haven't reached 1995 yet, obviously, but Jackson's New Apotheosis Theorem of '95 states that at a certain level of magical ability, one can sense the tunnels that Apparition creates through space-time and follow them directly. Even track them, or tie them back to their originators, if they have sufficient information about the subject of Apparition."

Riddle cursed. "He could find us by the sheer fact that we Apparated?"

"I've never seen it executed. But I'd guess so. In fact, I'd guess he could probably find us right now, unless –" Hermione's eyes widened. "Actually… if we had a way to … hold on."

"What?"

"Goodness, I hope Harry's kept it."

"Kept what?"

Hermione shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. She wasn't about to tell him that Harry had _the_ Invisibility Cloak, one of the three Hallows. "Never mind. Come on – there's not much time."

She grabbed his arm and they swirled away.

**x**

**x**

**x**

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><p><strong>"Time is a game played beautifully by children."<strong>

―**Heraclitus, **_**Fragments**_

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><p><strong>Don't forget to drop a review, and as always, thanks for reading!<strong>

**Speechwriter**


	6. 2036, pt 2

**HEY. So sorry about the wait. Massive thanks to Ari (aribh1306), who made a fantastic cover for this fic that singlehandedly yanked me out of writer's block.**

**Thanks to reviewers; you guys are lovely:**

**Chipofmintchocolate, EmeraldGoddess52, Guest, Lance Murdock, mm811, shouldabeenadog, DumDumDum, Timeturner394, Beaufale, riddle1rave, totallyawesome96, Dinobunny, SamarKanda, Sethera, Zelma Kallas, HereToRead84, AvoidedIsland, Aribh1306, le-femme-cavalier, akeginu, Ijoan, NyteFyre, Aoi Dragon, Anguish is My Poison, Weird-Chik2, suckonthat, Jbjudson, summerful21, Shan84, Dr. Shanty, Dija, Lost O'Fallon Girl, ShimmeringWater, Alassea Riddle, YukiAndZero, Nerys, Darren Jaguar, Barryium, murtagh799, ugottalongway2go, Guest, gilderoys, PintoNess, Lost Soul Here, turningbackthetimeturner, seniorforayear07. An immense pleasure to hear from you. HUGS.**

**I went back and did a bit of posthaste editing on the two-Riddles scene, the two-Hermiones scene, and the George scene. Nothing too much has changed, but it should be a bit more comprehensible now. Ehehe.**

**On to the update. Hope you like it - long chapter this time around. All my love –**

**speech**

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><p>"<strong>Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to."<strong>**  
><strong>**―****Lao Tzu**

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><p>It didn't take long to find where the still-famous Harry Potter lived. Hermione had a feeling he would want to live in Godric's Hollow, and the hunch turned out to be correct. Depressingly enough, it took even less time to break into his house and disable the alarm enchantment than it had to find the place.<p>

Hermione found herself immensely relieved that no one was home. Seeing the pictures on the wall was bad enough – the handsome elder Harry, the Ginny with wisps of grey in her hair, the three children on their wedding days …

Hermione half-wanted to stare, to take in every tiny detail. But she stopped herself. There wasn't time – and besides, it wasn't her right to intrude on this future. There would be time to appreciate Harry, Ginny, and their children for the rest of her life, but now, her goal had to be to give herself that opportunity. _Get home._

And for that, she had to find the Cloak. They needed secrecy.

"Tell me why we're here," Riddle said as they crept down the carpeted hall. "What is this place? Who are these people?"

Ignoring him, Hermione pulled her wand from under her robes and wove it through the air. She'd never tried this spell before, but for some reason, Riddle's words snuck into the back of her mind, reassuring her: _For those such as us, theory is practice._ Such an arrogant concept, and yet it helped.

She let her eyes slip out of focus, fixing her awareness on the humming core of her wand. As she mentally reiterated the incantation – _Zynyste Seht, Zynyste Seht – _she trailed her wand counterclockwise, flicked … and faint silver lines flared up in her peripherals. _Excellent._

The Potter household wore an omnipresent buzz of magic, from what looked like a Wizarding Wheeze in the depths of the closet to a knife that hovered absentmindedly over a wooden block, decapitating carrots. And now, every magical object wore a veil of silver, as long as she didn't look directly at it. The spell had worked. With half a triumphant smile, Hermione lowered her wand.

"An Unveiler," Riddle said. "What are you searching for? Answer me."

"We're pressed for time; I can't explain. If Bansherwold traces his way here – look, just do the spell yourself and help me look for any space that's concealed, would you?"

"I'm not about to assist you until I'm sure you won't pull out some weapon to –"

"I thought we'd established that our priority isn't hurting one another."

His lip curled. "Yes, because you've given me a hundred excellent reasons to trust you."

"Oh, Merlin! As if you –" She turned away, holding her breath in an attempt not to snap. Insufferable, that's what he was. Gritting her teeth, she stalked off down the hall. "Fine. I'll do it myself."

Harry's house was – thank God – of a relatively modest size, sleek warm wood and Gryffindor colors and low ceilings. Hermione traced one of the red curtains with an index finger.

Where would Harry hide his Invisibility Cloak? His most valuable possession?

Somewhere close to home. Close to the heart. A bedroom, probably … Hermione hurried up the stairs, a fuming Riddle storming up behind her. But when she arrived at the landing, she stopped so abruptly his skull smacked into her back.

She hardly noticed. Her hand had leapt to her mouth; she took in a sharp breath past her sweaty fingers. The wall opposite was a glow of silver, a collage of moving photographic memory.

Faces. So many faces. Remus, Tonks, Sirius. Harry had even managed to find a photograph of Dobby, which sat near the center of the wall – right beside the picture of Harry's parents.

Once the shock of seeing so many familiar eyes faded, Hermione frowned. This wall was a perfect shield for any sort of magic-sensitive charm, including an Unveiler. With every photograph developed under magic influence, the sea of silver before her obstructed any sort of view she might have had of the wall behind it.

She approached the wall in a haze. Her palm slid over the faded photograph of Harry's parents. They smiled.

Hermione flicked her wand, but the photographs wouldn't budge – permanent sticking charms on their backs, of course.

This wall was looking more and more likely.

"Is something behind there?" Tom said sharply.

"I don't know. Don't do anything rash, please."

He stepped up to the wall of photographs and folded his arms, his lip curling. An _elf _on this wall, amongst wizards? And was that a _giant_? Disgusting. So Gryffindorof these homeowners. "What do you expect to find?"

"An Invisibility Cloak," Hermione said, flicking her wand at the floor. _"Diffindo._" Three wide boards splintered. With three more incisions, Hermione cut a full hole and clambered in.

An Invisibility Cloak? Riddle glanced back at the wall with grudging and tight-lipped respect. This family had an Invisibility Cloak hoarded away in their house … perhaps they weren't as useless as his original impression had led him to believe.

"What's your last name?" he said toward the hole at his feet.

"Why?"

"I'm not calling you by your first, so it's this or 'girl'."

"Granger."

His disgust intensified. Filthy, common name – not unexpected, given the girl's untoward demeanor. What if she was half-blood, or worse, a Mudblood? Perish the thought. He thought he'd rather not know.

Riddle turned his mind back to more pressing issues. When Bansherwold had murdered Granger's older self, had he broken the Villinger's Bond? Certain types of charm magic and spellwork only worked in a linear direction; technically, Hermione Granger didn't exist anymore. At this point in time, she was dead. If the Villinger's Bond really was broken, couldn't he murder this girl and pursue Bansherwold himself?

Bansherwold, who had two copies of the Timeglass. Bansherwold, who had a double, one old and crafty, one young and strong.

As much as it disgusted him to admit it, Riddle likely needed some sort of ally in this situation. Bansherwold had, after all, already outfoxed him. Twice. And as far as motive went, Granger would be the closest possible option: She, too, was aiming to get back to her appropriate time period.

And if she kept digging up artifacts like Invisibility Cloaks? Well. Her usefulness was not to be debated.

Riddle heard something rustling behind the wall. "Anything there?"

"Yes. A safe, charmed shut."

Riddle lifted his wand to blast through the wall, but as if Granger had seen him, she snapped, "But don't do anything rash, Riddle. It's got an Absorption Ward, so the more powerful the magic around it, the more likely it is to trigger some sort of alarm. If I can just find the counterspell…"

A few more minutes passed. Riddle went back to surveying the photographs, his sharp eyes brushing over faces.

That Longbottom boy. The blonde girl off her rocker … the redhead. Recurring characters from Granger's life.

The Ron boy he'd threatened in the Chamber. Lots of photographs of him.

The two chattering girls who'd brought them to the Headmaster's office …

Older iterations of nearly all these people. And in so many photographs, a skinny man with black hair and glasses. This had to be Harry Potter … _the _Harry Potter.

Well, no matter. When he returned to his time, he would find Potter and exterminate him. It would be difficult – tampering with time always was – but it wouldn't be impossible. He could alter the timeline; he could prevent Potter's birth somehow. A comforting thought.

And if Granger did anything he didn't like, perhaps he'd prevent this _Ron_ character's birth, too. The thought gave him a childish, vindictive pleasure. He nursed it for a moment.

Then a muffled _crack_.

Riddle cursed and hurried to the window. The sun, almost at its height, glared down at a pair of wizards in the middle of the street, close to where he and Granger had appeared. One was old and wizened; the other was young and handsome; both were familiar.

"Granger!" Riddle said, whipping back around to face the wall. "Is it open yet? Bansherwold's here, he's _here_. He and his old self, both."

"What? No, not quite –"

_Damn incompetent teenaged witches – _Riddle swept back to the hole in the floor, lowered himself in, and dragged himself forward on his forearms, trying not to fixate on the indignity of the situation. He flicked his wand, and every mote of dust coating his surroundings flew from him, repelled as if by a gust of wind. This wand, the one Granger had procured for him in Rome, wasn't particularly to his liking – it was a touch inflexible – but it would do until he retrieved the other.

Riddle's forearms ached, unused to the duress of supporting his body weight. Largely because it'd never been necessary until this idiotic debacle.

_No time to waste lamenting the turn of events, _he told himself, but part of him whined inwardly anyway.

The planks above him ended abruptly. He pulled himself to his feet and found himself uncomfortably close to Granger, crammed into a square meter of dark space. She let out a noise of alarm and jabbed her wand into his chest. A pulse of static energy darted through him, and he lurched back, cursing. "What in hell's name –"

"Sorry, you just, you were lurking!"

"Shut up. What spell has Potter used?"

Her eyes narrowed, but she lowered her wand and turned to the safe. It gave off a gentle golden glow in the dark. "From what I've read, it looks like a Lesmore Locktight. I've canceled the Absorption Ward."

"Right." Riddle leaned forward and brushed the top of the safe with the side of his palm. It was cool to the touch.

He lowered his wand to the safe and felt his way around the spell. If it was a Locktight – and indeed, it seemed to fit the parameters – they'd require a spell stronger than the original caster's to break it.

Riddle flicked his wand a few times, eyeing the corners of the safe. A combination ought to do the trick; doubtless Potter was a powerful wizard, but against multiple spells from the wand of Tom Riddle, who could hope to escape intact?

A smirk on his face, Riddle started weaving lock-breakers into place.

He didn't even notice the sound of the house's front door opening until Hermione whispered, "Oh, Merlin's beard."

Riddle closed his eyes and pointedly ignored her.

Hermione glanced at the safe, trying to quell her nerves. Four glittering strands of silver lay atop the golden glow, and Riddle's sharp features were set in concentration. She almost felt affronted that he'd presume to know how to break it already, but after a second, she swallowed her pride. Just a wall and a set of steps away, Gurdy Bansherwold was searching for them. No time for resentment. Not even against this evil git.

What the hell did Bansherwold want with them?

Hermione crouched, trying to stay breathing distance from Riddle – damn near impossible, given the cramped quarters – and crawled back into the two-foot-deep space under the floor. After a second's shifting, and one terrifyingly conspicuous creak, she opted to cast Silencing charms on the floorboards.

She shuffled forward a couple meters before reaching her impromptu exit. Craning up a hand, she pulled the damaged floor back into place and repaired the boards. Darkness settled over her, and she closed her eyes, fighting back a mild bout of claustrophobia. _Okay. Get back to the safe._

She curled up and wriggled around until she was facing the other direction, then slipped back. When she returned, as if on cue, Riddle slashed his wand through the darkness. A trail of crimson sparks lit his face, lit his fierce expression, and for a second, Hermione's breath caught in her throat. For that moment, he'd looked startlingly like Harry, aiming a Stupefy in the Department of Mysteries, kindling a dim red fire in the depths of the Forest of Dean …

The safe clicked open and broke her train of thought, and a glimmer of silvery fabric from inside made her heart leap. She knelt, pulled the metal door wide, and yanked the Cloak out.

Footsteps creaking up the stairwell.

"I don't mean to rush you," Riddle said, clearly meaning to rush her. His voice was so soft it sounded almost like a growl. "But whatever you're planning, hurry the hell u –"

"I know!" she whispered hotly, yanking the Cloak over her shoulders. One corner in her hand, she reached around Riddle's shoulder. He tensed as her fingers brushed him.

He pulled the Cloak over his head. Under its shade, his eyes fixed on hers. Dark and unreadable as obsidian. "I'm assuming we're Apparating. Where exactly –"

She slipped her arm into his and turned on her heel.

They should have whipped into thin air, enfolded by tunnels of air and compressed space.

Instead, Hermione smacked right into Riddle's chest. His hands shot out and fastened around her shoulders as if to steady her, but the fury and panic on his face did anything but reassure her.

Her eyes widened as she realized. Anti-Apparition ward; virtually undetectable, of course … but how was Harry even allowed to have one, legally?

Her mouth opened slightly, but Riddle let go of her and smashed a finger to her lips, silencing her. His eyes cut, the intent clear. _Make a sound and I will cut your throat._

"Cloak in your bag," he ordered with little more volume than an exhalation. His long fingers plucked the silvery cloth from where it had tangled them together. "We'll have to fight our way out."

She swatted his hand from her mouth, stuffed the Cloak into her bag, and drew her wand, training her ears. If they could pinpoint where the enemy was, they'd have the natural advantage.

But she couldn't keep her wand hand from shaking, which, frankly, embarrassed her. Honestly, the number of times she, Harry, and Ron had faced mortal peril, and her body still slipped into panic every time… silly, really. She mentally scolded herself, which had little to no positive result.

Then a voice. "Freeze, now! I'm warning you!"

Hermione stared at the wooden wall separating them from the landing. Was the voice talking to _them_? No, it couldn't be… and besides, that wasn't the voice of the young Bansherwold they'd met. It didn't sound anything like an old man, though.

A small click rang through the breathless silence. Almost … mechanical?

"It wasn't me!" burst out a voice, this time an old man's. "This fellow grabbed me on the street and suddenly we were out of London, I swear it! I had nothing to do with it!"

Riddle smirked. He could practically see the innocent look on the elder Bansherwold's face as he made his bold-faced lie. Accusing his younger self of kidnapping him … fascinating ploy; well-done.

"Yes. This man is my hostage," snarled the voice of Bansherwold the Younger, and the sounds of a small scuffle ensued. Riddle frowned. Interesting – so the Younger was playing along. What was his motive?

"Oh, God, don't shoot!" said the Elder, his voice cracking. "Please!"

Riddle's frown curdled into a sour bafflement. Shoot what? 'Don't shoot' … the phrase sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it …

He glanced at Granger, who seemed to be getting somewhat more from this exchange than he was. Her face, layered with darkness, looked tense. Creases lined her pursed lips. The familiar intensity of a frequent thinker.

"What do you want with the old man?" said the first voice. "Don't you lay a finger on him. We're authorized by the British government to fire at will when confronted with magical threat."

Everything clicked. That voice was a Muggle, wielding some sort of pistol or firearm. A Muggle – maybe one of those scientists they'd heard about, wanting to experiment on all things wizardly …? Did scientists carry guns? Maybe some Muggle thug sent to do the bidding of the scientists.

"If you come quietly, I won't shoot you," said the Muggle's voice.

"I'm sorry," said Bansherwold. "I'm actually only here to get reinforcements."

_Reinforcements? _Riddle thought. He realized what Bansherwold meant a split second before the wall separating them exploded.

Everything was fire and light and deafening roar. "Protego!" yelled Granger's voice from somewhere in the melee, and she yanked him close as if on instinct, pulling him to safety. The inferno curled around Granger's shield, threatening to buckle the thin barrier inward. Riddle flicked his own wand and staggered back, his eyes snapping shut against the blinding flame. His shield – a dark whirlwind – ate away at the flame until the explosion had burned itself to dust, an eternity later.

Riddle lowered his wand, opened his eyes. Not one but two Muggles stood there, pointing small silvery guns in their direction. They looked stunned, but defiant. The silence rang. A dangerous impasse.

Wind brushed Riddle's back. A hole had been blasted through the back of the house. Ash fluttered around them, a charred reminder. Riddle brushed his shoulders off.

"Don't move!" one Muggle yelled, fear plain on his pasty face. Riddle resisted the urge to smile toothily and say, _Boo!_

"Oh, God." Hermione's voice was a hoarse whisper, slight against the sunlight. She swayed slightly. "No, _no_. Harry's house. Merlin, all those photographs –" Harry's photograph of his parents… all he had left of them; he'd had it for over forty years now … and the photograph of Dobby, of Dumbledore, the wedding photos – irreplaceable. What had Bansherwold _done_?

Riddle couldn't help it. His concentration broke. "_Photographs? _Are you bloody _insane_?" he spat, rounding on her. "There are far more important –"

"Expelliarmus," said Bansherwold's voice. Riddle's fingers tightened on his wand convulsively, just in time to feel the wood tug at his grip. Hermione's wand flew from her hand, but Riddle grabbed his back; clutched it to his chest.

"Tom, Hermione," said Bansherwold the Younger, pocketing Hermione's wand. The wizard's own wand was still pressed into Bansherwold the Elder's jugular. "Glad to have you join us." His eyes flickered to the safe behind them. "And I see you've retrieved the Cloak. Wonderful."

Riddle inclined his head by way of greeting. His voice turned smooth once more. "I believe your prisoner has my wand."

"I never took no wand," the elder Bansherwold moaned. "I never."

"Don't be ridiculous," Riddle said. "You took the wand when I last saw you, in 2022, along with that of my … acquaintance, Ms. Granger. Though you were rather younger then. I believe the wands are still in your possession." He held out a hand, perfectly confident.

"Don't give him anything," ordered the taller Muggle. "Freeze, all of you! I will shoot!"

Riddle strongly resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They obviously didn't know who they were dealing with. Those feeble little Muggle toys couldn't possibly –

And then he turned sharply to face one of the Muggles, and an earsplitting bang rang through the house. Like the noise of Apparition, but no one disappeared.

And Riddle didn't even realize he was bleeding until he tried to lift his wand and a wave of hot pain rang up through his torso.

"What did –" He looked down and blinked at the dark wet stain blossoming across his robes. And a metal fist of agony slammed into his side.

He staggered and let out half a breath.

Before he could process what exactly had happened, Granger was at his side, supporting his weight, and he could feel the blood pulsing out of him and bloody _Merlin _he couldn't think –

His wand touched the spot lightly. The sodden hole in his robes. It had torn a chunk of flesh right out of his side, it must have –

And the Muggles were yelling –

"What'd you go and shoot him for? We're supposed to bring 'em back intact, you bloody great idiot!"

"I was showing them I'm not afraid to shoot! It wasn't fatal, was it, look, he's alive, isn't he –"

"Oh, God, oh shit, oh God," went the voice in his ear, Granger's voice, and he felt her buckling under his weight –

And above everything rose the calm voice of Alengurd Bansherwold. "Ms. Granger, my Reductory Exo-Flame has cancelled the Anti-Apparition ward. If you will put on the Cloak and Apparate to the Eiffel Tower, I shall meet you there and return your wands – your _true _wands. I shall then give you your next instructions."

"What's … Eiffel Tower –" Riddle said.

"Riddle, dear. Try and save your breath; you're well on your way to passing out soon." Bansherwold the Younger smiled. "As for the Eiffel Tower … I have a plan for France that I'd love you two to take part in." He drew the Timeglass from his pocket. Riddle and Granger alike went rigid. "There's also the issue of this, which you two seem to need."

Was this an attempt to blackmail the pair of them into being Bansherwold's _henchmen?_

Hot rage rose up in Riddle's throat. "You –" he choked out. "I will _murder you_."

"I don't see the fun in that, but feel free to try."

_Well, since you asked so nicely. _Riddle clasped his wand in his hand, conjured a voice past his agony, and snarled, "_Avada Kedavra_!"

The jet of green light reached the pair of Bansherwolds.

And it dissipated.

"Now, good, you've had your fun. Enough of that," Bansherwold said, tucking the Timeglass back into his pocket as if nothing had just happened. As if the single most powerful curse in the world hadn't just _vanished _in front of him like a faulty Patronus.

With a flick of Bansherwold's wrist, another Disarming charm flew toward Riddle, and Riddle's wand flew from his nerveless fingers.

He couldn't stop staring. His side was pounding. His mind was spinning and his vision was lurching and making him sick. What had just happened?

What was going on? What the hell was this control of magic the man had? _How could he be more powerful than Tom?_

"What if I refuse?" Granger said, her voice radiating strength. Riddle felt the sudden compulsion to look at her, and he found a reassuring fire blazing in her eyes. Even the bickering Muggles fell quiet.

Bansherwold cocked his head. "What?"

"I said, what if I don't follow your plan? What if I say to hell with you?"

"Then, Ms. Granger, your pride leaves something to be desired when it comes to prudence," said the wizard quietly, his piercing eyes digging into the girl's defiant stare. "If you don't agree, I shan't give you back your wand, and you won't be able to Apparate anywhere at all."

"You're not giving anyone anyone's wand!" yelled the taller Muggle, striding forward.

Bansherwold's pleasant demeanor did a terrifyingly rapid 180. He barely even glanced over and twitched his wand before the tall Muggle went silent, pawing at his throat in horror. "Now, as I was saying," Bansherwold said, eyes turning back to Riddle and Hermione. "I will dispose of this Muggle threat and you will Apparate with me in order to regain your wands. Or you will go with these men and face everything that it entails."

Bansherwold the Elder sagged back against his younger counterpart yet more, in counterpoint with Riddle's slipping body. Granger's hands were viselike on his shoulders. Didn't matter. He was going to pass out.

"No," Riddle managed to rasp. He held his eyes long enough to see hers lock onto his. Hazel. She was as terrified, as unnerved by what had happened with the _Avada _as he was. But she was masking it well.

Granger echoed his word, louder and stronger. "No. We're not doing a thing you want. You manipulative bastard."

"Really!" Bansherwold seemed almost pleased by the result. Hermione bit her lip. Did that mean they were playing into his hands? And every inch of her thirsted to lunge for him, wrest the Timeglass from his possession –

Hopeless. No wand. An enemy who could seemingly cancel magic at will. A wounded Riddle. (When would his arrogance stop getting him in trouble? You didn't make sudden motions around men with guns, for Merlin's sake –)

The only thing she had left was the ability to say no.

"No," she repeated, and for once, her voice didn't betray her. She sounded far more confident than she felt, and her larynx didn't suddenly decide to leap an octave up. "I'm sure we'll see you again. You seem to need us, for whatever reason."

One hooded eye flickered in a wink. "Very good, Ms. Granger. I'm sad you'll be missing this particular event, but we have all of time before us. At least, I do. I'll see you soon. Enjoy your detainment."

He turned on his heel. He and his seeming captive vanished with a crack.

Hermione could only sit there, wandless and helpless, as the still-silent Muggles bore down on them.

oOo

Hermione hadn't been to a Muggle hospital in a while, not since her father had broken his ankle the summer before fourth year. This didn't feel like a proper hospital, though – probably wasn't. Seemed like some sort of research institute, from the numerous labs and offices they passed. They were somewhere in London, obviously: Hermione had been bundled into the back of a car and locked in, but that hadn't stopped her from seeing the scenery pass by. Unfortunately, that hardly narrowed the field for potential locations.

The fact that cars _hovered _unsettled her. The line between science and magic was growing damn near close to indistinguishable.

As for Riddle, they'd taken him in an ambulance. She wondered who would have the unpleasant experience of facing his wrath when he woke up all bandaged together, but mostly she just wondered if they'd send him to the same place as her, eventually. What if Bansherwold went looking for Riddle only? What if they left her abandoned in 2036? After all, it was Riddle, not Bansherwold, who'd ended up bringing her along. She was incidental to Bansherwold's plan.

Though he'd seemed to have a disproportionate amount of interest in her choices at Harry's house. Maybe he'd started factoring her into his plots … not reassuring.

Now she sat in a white, sterile room, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, feeling exposed and more than a little terrified. Frankly, the science of magic fascinated Hermione; she wouldn't mind donating some blood or DNA to _that_ cause at all. But if the rumors were true, and that wasn't all the tests entailed … if they treated wizards like animals, to be tested cruelly and unfairly …

She wanted to believe that wasn't true. But Merlin, she knew what awful things people could do. She'd seen it, and God knew she'd read about it.

Hermione stared at the eye chart on the wall and kept quiet.

They said they were going to ask her questions. Would it be a proper interrogation? Would they want information about places like Diagon Alley; Hogwarts? And most importantly, would they know if she lied? They didn't have Veritaserum, obviously, but Hermione knew rudimentary lie detectors had been developed in the Muggle world even back in 1998. They'd had a good forty years to perfect the design.

This wasn't looking good. She needed to get out, needed to get to a wand. The authorities – the Wizard Watch, as they called themselves – hadn't forcibly restrained her, as of yet. They'd just locked her into the car, escorted her from place to place, and now locked her into this exam room. They were still treating her like she'd volunteered to be here, which she supposed ought to give her comfort. Somehow, it failed completely in that respect.

But if she played the docile volunteer long enough, maybe she could lull them into a false sense of security.

The door opened. A woman walked in, her hair in a bun so tight her blonde hair looked part of her pale scalp. "Ms. Granger," said the woman, holding out a hand. "My name's Dr. Norris. How are you?"

"All right, thank you," Hermione said, shaking the doctor's hand. The door shut with a deep boom, and Hermione forced herself not to look at the exit longingly. "My, erm, about my … friend –?"

"Doing fine. The bullet went right through right above his hip, didn't hit any major arteries. We've discharged the Watch member who shot him."

Well, that was something. This meant they had some sense of human decency, right?

"I'm going to ask you a few questions," said Dr. Norris, taking a clipboard from where it had been tucked under her arm. Something hardened in her blue eyes. "I hope you'll cooperate."

"Of course."

"When did you first learn that you could control magic?"

Hermione half-smiled. "Well, I didn't learn that it was a controllable ability until I was eleven. But I first started exhibiting signs of it at a younger age. When I was six, I had a tantrum because I wanted the family cat to stay outdoors, and all the doorknobs in the house ended up disappearing, which wasn't particularly enjoyable."

Dr. Norris lifted one thin eyebrow and scribbled on her clipboard. For one horrible second, Hermione caught a strong whiff of Umbridge in the atmosphere. "Yes." Hermione cleared her throat. "And, erm, there was the usual anger-related stuff. Lightbulbs shattering, people slipping on perfectly stable ground. I was quite mild when I was younger, except once at school. I … A girl was making fun of the book I was reading. I got so angry …" Hermione's voice choked. She hated this memory. "Well, she ended up with a pair of scissors through her hand."

Again, the quirk of the eyebrow. Dr. Norris put down the pen. "Interesting. Anything else?"

"No, nothing notable."

"So, what happened when you were eleven? How did you come to suspect this was an ability, rather than, say, bad luck?"

Hermione floundered. They didn't know about Hogwarts? How did they not know about Hogwarts yet? Was this a test?

"I … I got my letter," she said. "_A_ letter. From a very famous wizard, and he told me I was a witch." Vague, but serviceable.

Norris's eyes pierced. Hermione forced herself to stare into them. If she looked away, she'd look guilty. "How did he know?" asked the doctor.

"The Ministry can track movements of young … I'm sorry, but don't you know any of this?"

"You're only the fourth Pom we've had available for questioning in Great Britain. The others have been … significantly less cooperative." The woman's dark-painted lips quirked to the side, and again a sense of foreboding hit Hermione deep in the gut.

"Pom?"

Norris nodded. "Well, P.O.M. – Person of Magic, of course. France has been able to get a hold of quite a few, as have Spain and Germany. Also, the United States has started doing raids, which I don't approve of. Such a violation of privacy. But we're rather behind when it comes to research; the British Poms seem to have non-magic-proofed themselves quite well."

"Muggle," Hermione blurted out.

"What?"

"The word for non-magic people is Muggle."

"Hm." Norris took a note.

Hermione shifted on the exam table and tried not to stare longingly at the door. Merlin, she needed a wand. Going without one made her feel young, made her feel like part of her was missing. "Where are the other three you've found, then?"

"They were criminals," Norris said shortly. "Caught using magic to perpetrate their crimes. They've since escaped."

"…escaped?"

"Yes; obviously, we had them captive, so they could face justice."

"We have the Wizengamot for dealing out justice to criminals," Hermione said. "It's a Wizarding court."

Norris lowered her clipboard and pushed her glasses up on her pointy nose. "You have an independent system of government?"

Hermione let out a short laugh. "The others really didn't tell you much, did they?" God, this felt strange, broaching the Statute of Secrecy so flagrantly. Of course, knowledge was the only tool to combat fear: Muggles were more likely to be ignorantly frightened of wizardry if they didn't understand it. Wasn't this the best course of action, really? She bit her lip, sat up straighter, and her resolve hardened. "Yes. We've got a Ministry of Magic, headed by a Minister. Sort of like our Prime Minister."

"Who is that? Someone we can contact?"

Hermione cleared her throat. Rubbed the back of her neck. "I … I don't really know, honestly." Admitting she didn't know something physically hurt. "I'm not from this time period."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm from 1998. Advanced time transport magic brought me here, and I've been trying to –"

"Magic can elicit _time-travel?_"

"Well, yes."

"1998 … So you were born … in what, the early eighties?"

"Yes. But I think you should know," Hermione said carefully, "that time travel isn't by any means _normal_. It's possible, but it's volatile and has potentially disastrous effects. Wizardry has as many hazards as Muggle science, and researchers and experimenters do just as much to attempt to ensure that magic is used responsibly as scientists do to ensure the responsible use of, say, weapons technology."

Norris nodded. A wisp of hair slipped from her bun, and she tucked it back into place immediately. "Naturally," she said, but mild relief softened her eyes. "So, if –"

The walkie-talkie on her belt blared suddenly. The sound was astonishingly clear, an urgent baritone. "Dr. Norris, turn on the nearest television. BBC One. This instant."

Norris's expression shut down, dead serious within a split second. She said, "Register. T.V.: On. Select: BBC One." In a flash, the television on the wall – massive, seemingly made out of a thin sheet of glass – flashed to life.

It showed a shot of two men standing beneath the Eiffel Tower. The elder Bansherwold's face appeared onscreen and swelled to fill the space. His overlarge nose, blistered with warts, was thrust into the camera's direct line of sight. The camera panned slowly to the younger, who stood nearly at the opposite end of the Tower's base, seemingly investigating its construction, with wand out. A flickering bluish bubble surrounded the Tower, keeping all else away. It was deserted.

The commentator: "The elder of these men has started a live broadcast on YouTube. He appears to be an innocent civilian held captive by the younger, streaming this information secretly. Here's the audio."

The screen went black, and the Elder's monologue came over the TV in a wheezy whisper. "I didn't want to say nothing, but I think he's gonna kill me, I think he's gonna kill me for what I know. If he sees me making this broadcast I'm dead, so I'll get to the point. My name's Allan and for fourty years I've been studyin' wizards, what they do, how they do it –"

"That's a lie!" Hermione burst out, suddenly on her feet.

"Sit down, miss," said Norris, voice hard as glass.

"But he's lying. His name's Alengurd Bansherwold and he's a famous Dark Wizard –"

"Sit down!"

Bansherwold said, "—and I've found a million pieces of conclusive evidence pointing to the fact that Wizards are dangerous, they hate non-magic folk, they're trying to –"

"But that's not true!"

"—take over the non-Wizarding population bit by bit, and if my research is correct then the way to stop all this is by evaluation of the Wizarding genome; there's an anomaly hidden somewhere in the sequencing –"

Horror roared in Hermione's mind, overriding even the rage. Was this _true?_

"—and if you find the difference you can create a biological barrier to Apparition, Wizards' most powerful tool . But that's not all. I've procured DNA from the most evil wizard of the last century, a genocidal maniac called Tom Riddle; I've analyzed it, and if you can find a wizard or witch to help you define the specific magical signature from the DNA strand, you can actually make the specific wizard's magic ineffectual when it's directed at you –"

Hermione's stomach twisted. _The Avada Kedavra._

"—and that's why I'm alive, otherwise Riddle would have killed me. And I think I'm close to the breakthrough of being able to have an injectable cure for magic, the genetic opposite to the magical signature, a cancellation of their dangerous abilities –"

Her world turned upside-down.

And then another voice came on. The younger Bansherwold's. "What are you doing over here? Are you saying something? Who are you talking to?"

"No one," said Bansherwold the Elder. "I'm just scared, please don't hurt me –"

"You're recording," said Bansherwold the Younger, in a voice of revelation. _A false voice, _said Hermione's mind, and suddenly she was so angry she thought she might burst. How dare he? How dare he spread this lie for the world to see? What was he even _doing?_

"You filthy Muggle, you're _recording _something!" he yelled. And the BBC camera snapped back on just in time for the world to see a jet of green light hit the elder Bansherwold square in the chest. He toppled to the ground. Dead.

Hermione quivered in place. Obviously not a real curse. A jet of green light, and the Elder was playing dead – but no Muggle could possibly know that.

Dr. Norris's hands were clasped over her mouth. The room felt like a vacuum. Hermione couldn't seem to draw breath.

The younger Bansherwold snatched the tiny microphone from where it had been hiding in the older man's lapel. He held it to his mouth, and his voice rang over the television. "Here's my message to all you non-magical scum. You are feeble. You are inferior. And you cannot stop us."

He flung the microphone to the ground – the _boom _rang in Hermione's very bones – and thrust his wand into the air.

A shockwave blasted from the tip of that wand and ripped up through the Eiffel Tower. Fire followed it, a dragon's inferno. Then a white blast that tore through the metal as if it were paper.

Then everything was lost in chaos and flame.

"No," Hermione whispered. "No, no, _no!_" Her voice rose to a hysterical shriek. "You mustn't listen to any of that, not all witches and wizards are like that! The man's insane, you've got to believe me! You've got to believe –"

Her hands were shaking. Her fists were curled tight.

The television shattered. Dr. Norris let out a cry and stumbled back, a cut drawn open across her cheek.

"Oh, Merlin, I'm so sorry," Hermione said. "I'm so sorry – let me –"

"Get away from me! _Get away!_"

Then a great _crack, _and Alengurd Bansherwold swirled into life two feet from them. "Hello," he said to Dr. Norris. "Nice to see you've met my friend."

The scientist's eyes went so wide Hermione thought her eyeballs might try for escape.

Bansherwold strode to Hermione's side, took her arm, and said, "I think it's long past time we left, don't you?"

Before she could even open her mouth to reply, he spun on his heel. Hermione closed her eyes, and when her feet slammed back into solid ground, she opened them again. A small gray hospital room, with a single bed and a single dark-haired occupant.

Bansherwold reached into the bed and took the unconscious Tom Riddle by the arm, using the hand that held his wand. "I rather like him better in this state," he said.

He let go of Hermione for a second to reach into his pocket, and Hermione made a lunge for the wand. He sighed, flicked it, and her arms and legs snapped together in a Full Body-Bind.

"Stop it. You're being tediously repetitive," Bansherwold said. His eyes bored into her, blue and grey and green and unforgiving, and above all else, mischievous. "Just wait. Patience, Hermione Granger, is a virtue."

His voice sent shivers across her skin.

Then he drew the Timeglass from his pocket, put that arm around Hermione's shoulders, and a whine entered the air. Grew deafening. And then the release in a sharp bang that tore the world apart before her frozen eyes.

x

x

x

* * *

><p>"<strong>I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.<strong>**  
><strong>**"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."**

**-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring**

* * *

><p><strong>Hope it was worth the wait! And I'm very sorry, by the way, about that wait. I got hung up in the middle of the chapter and then fell into massive writer's block. But I'm feeling better about the story now.<strong>

**Thanks for reading, and as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!**

**-speech**


	7. 2065

**Yikes. Sorry again about a monstrous wait, it's really not fair to you guys. I'm hopefully going to be able to finish this story over this summer; it's really just bits of the outline that are stalling me, to be honest. I miss back when I was a reliable updater. (read: during tied for last)**

**Thanks so much for your patience if you're still with me; if you're not, hell if I can blame you. (If you're curious as to *why* this particular wait was so horrendous, check my profile.) Thanks especially to all of you who reviewed; I love reading notes from you more than I love chocolate.**

**Enjoy.**

**-speech**

* * *

><p><strong>"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."<strong>

**-Kurt Vonnegut**

* * *

><p>Hermione staggered away from Bansherwold and clutched her hands over her rolling stomach. "What have you – why did you –!"<p>

Bansherwold settled to the ground, laying Riddle's unconscious body to the stone floor to tend to his gunshot wound.

_Stone floor_ … Hermione cast her eyes about wildly, trying to make sense of it. They weren't in Riddle's hospital room anymore; instead, they sat in the middle of a bare concrete cell. One dingy window was set in the wall, beyond which the nighttime mists stirred, wraithlike. A small fireplace was shoved almost haphazardly into the wall beside the window. "Where are we? Why aren't we in the same place?"

"Hermione," Bansherwold said with exaggerated patience, "you haven't stayed in the same place during any of these leaps. Think about it logically. Astronomically. If you really were to remain in the same place, the earth would be in an entirely different stage of orbit, and you would be crushed in the vacuum of space. In fact, arguably, there is no such concept as "same place;" nor – slightly more controversially – such a thing as "same time." Everything is always moving. Expanding. Changing. You know this."

He went back to Riddle's wound with an expression of complete unconcern, as if he had just given her the time of day.

Hermione staggered to the window. "When are we, then? Relatively speaking?"

"2065," he said absentmindedly. "Shame we missed 2057, I rather liked that year. This place was a lot nicer then."

"We've lost almost thirty years," Hermione said, more to herself than to him. Thirty years … a third of a lifetime, hacked away in a minute's time.

She suddenly had the sense of plunging forward into infinite depths, plowing into an eternal pit. Merlin, with the Timeglass, she could go on and on and on. Know everything there was to know. Know everything that would ever be known.

"You're wondering," said Alengurd Bansherwold.

"What?"

"I can hear it. Your silences are rather loud," he said.

She settled into a spindly plastic chair nearby, hugging her arms to her stomach. "Bansherwold, why are you doing this? I have to know. Why? And why me?"

"Call me Alen, please. And no one is more deserving."

Hermione scoffed. As if they were on first-name terms. "Deserving of what, of this existential torture?"

He half-smiled. His eyes looked calm. "For many, this would not be existential torture. Most others, Hermione, would find less anxiety in this situation than you. They would be fascinated, exhilarated. They would be frantically learning all they could and hunting through every potentiality. Every shred of the future they could absorb, they would."

"But I don't want to."

"Yes," he murmured, flicking strands of fair hair from his eyes. "And isn't that extraordinary."

Hermione stared down at her fingers with eyes narrowed. She didn't want his praise; in fact, she wished mulishly that he would disappear. She wanted form, structure, rigidity; she wanted anything to make sense. Hell, she wanted to go back to her first year at Hogwarts, where she could cherish every tiny concrete goal.

This object, this crystal – it opened infinite possibilities. And in doing so, it made everything meaningless.

It kicked to the forefront what had kept Hermione up at nights as a young child: the knowledge that she was a speck on the face of an earth that was always cleansing itself. The knowledge that any mark she could place upon the world was nowhere near indelible. This reality of the eternity of time threatened to engulf her, to ruin her.

Something nagged at her sensibilities. What Bansherwold had said about appearing in the same astronomical location … how had she been doing it, then? How had she and Riddle been doing it, keeping themselves pinned to the face of the Earth? The leaps had been remarkably accurate, with that sort of lens in mind. They hadn't appeared even a foot out of place.

Had it just been because they'd expected no different?

Now that Bansherwold had made her wonder, was there a danger that the next time she touched the damn thing, she'd end up millions of miles away, sucked into a sun or drifting out of orbit, eyes boiling out of her head?

_Damn him._

"Ennervate," said Bansherwold's voice.

Hermione found herself absurdly relieved when Tom Riddle sat up. Relieved at the sheer familiarity of him. Relieved at the instinctual and almost logical cruelty which governed his life, because Merlin, at least he seemed to _have _a logical center. How was she supposed to ascertain Bansherwold's motives when he seemed so unhinged half the time? Sure, her older self had told her that the man was sane, but Hermione wasn't quite sure.

"When?" said Riddle hoarsely, grasping at his healed wound.

"2065," Hermione said. Riddle cursed. She shared his sentiments.

"You were right, by the way," Bansherwold said to Riddle.

"About?"

"He had both your wands. My elder self."

"Is he here now?" Riddle said. "In this time?"

Bansherwold nodded.

"And what are you doing here?" Riddle demanded. "Why did you heal me? Why are you doing any of this?"

"Because time needs a governor who is not afraid," Bansherwold said. "Are you afraid of time, Tom Riddle?"

"I am afraid of nothing," he hissed. Even Hermione could tell it was a blatant lie, but she couldn't help wondering what else he _did _fear besides time's passage, besides death and decay.

"I am," Hermione said. The others' eyes fell on her, one pair dark and disbelieving, one pair calm and appreciative. "I'm afraid. God knows it's natural, being afraid of something that's obliterated so much of the world already."

Bansherwold smiled. "Pity."

"What's a pity?" Hermione said.

"That the sensible ones never try for supreme leadership." He stood, drew a wine-red pouch from his pocket, and handed it to Hermione. She peeked inside and saw the Timeglass's point of flame glimmering within. "I'm giving you this for safekeeping," Bansherwold said. "Think of it as a gesture of good faith. It's warded shut, by the way."

As Hermione tucked the pouch into her bag, Bansherwold caught Riddle's eye and chuckled with no mirth whatsoever. "Don't even bother trying a Villinger's Bond – I've already handled that. Anyway, I have to go handle some things. It's …" He checked a glass contraption on his wrist that – while shaped like a watch – had a face nothing like a clock. It was notched, like a graduated cylinder, partially filled. Hermione tried to peer closer, but he let his hand drop, and his sleeve obscured it instantly. "Yes, it's about time."

"Time for what?" Riddle said sharply.

In response, Bansherwold handed Riddle a wand, his own yew wand. "Try not to lose it again."

Riddle took the wand in seeming disbelief. Hermione wished to the marrow of her bone that Bansherwold would deign to bestow her own upon her in similar random fashion, but no such luck.

She repeated Riddle's question: "Hang on, time for _what_?"

Bansherwold turned on his heel and vanished.

Riddle, the wand loosely held in his grip, conjured a few floating, fiery bubbles. They dissipated into the air like burning threads of gossamer. He narrowed his eyes at the wand. It felt too whippy, a touch too responsive. What had Bansherwold done to it?

Hermione let out a slow breath. It seemed like it had been a million years since she'd had the time to think properly. "Shall we try using this?" she suggested, holding up the Timeglass.

Riddle cast her a glance that looked disconcertingly apathetic. "If you'd like."

After a second, she said, "No, stop that."

"Stop what?"

"That voice. The way you're sitting." She stood. "You're not going to sit here and plot, much less pout. We have to keep moving. We have to figure out where this place is and what our circumstances are."

He made no move to reply.

"We need information. Come on."

"As if you could order me around," he said, contempt dripping from every syllable.

"I can and will. _Up,_" she said as if he were a particularly obstinate broomstick.

"We're in a safe location and we have the Timeglass," he pointed out. "I even have my wand back. We have all we need to return to our respective times, you foolish girl, judging by the way the man's been popping in and out of time –"

"Time. Time … he said it was time for _something_," Hermione said, more to herself than to Riddle. "Time for wh –?"

The door in the wall burst open. They whipped around to face it, Riddle's wand instantly at the ready.

"Down on your knees!" yelled the woman framed in the door, brandishing a bone-white machine gun that looked deceptively fragile. She wore loose-fitting leather armor, tan, with something bizarrely like chainmail clanking around the knees and joints. Three, then six, then nine others poured through the door after her.

"Take my arm," Riddle said. Wandless, Hermione obliged instantly.

He spun. Nothing happened.

"Wards," said the woman with the machine gun triumphantly. "Sorry, Apparition's broken today."

It would never get less bizarre, Hermione thought, hearing Muggles referencing magic so cavalierly.

Riddle lashed his wand out at the woman, an ugly snarl on his face. A bright yellow curse rocketed her way.

She jabbed a button on the back of her hand. Her tan suit crackled with generated energy. The yellow curse swam into the fizzling electric field, jerked like a dying snake, and dissipated. "Confuses certain magical energy signatures," the woman said, a smug expression settling over her face. Riddle imagined dismantling that face several different ways.

"Get them," she said, her expression turning hard. Her nine companions strode forward.

A malicious leer leaking like oil across his lips, Riddle slashed out with his wand again. If he couldn't hit them, he'd damn well make the world around them crumble.

The ground under their feet cracked, erupted in whizzing fragments of stone with a noise like gunfire. Riddle fixed his wand on the floor and gritted his teeth, muttering a long string of incantations. A great roar swallowed the air, and the ground fell away, sucked downward as if by some infernal vacuum.

The Muggle soldiers screamed as they toppled into the pit. The lead woman was the last to go. The screams were a symphony to Riddle's ears.

In the wake of the pit's formation, the nearby wall of the stone room crumbled, cracked, and then fell altogether, sucked down after the screams of the soldiers. Riddle flicked his wand upward, transforming the huge chunks of stone ceiling that toppled toward them into crows. The pit stopped growing and swallowing everything at a twenty-foot diameter.

Silence fell, blistered only by the hoarse cries of the crows, which were flapping off into the starlight.

"Oh my goodness," Hermione whispered as the dust cleared. Through the gap where the wall had been, she saw that their cottage sat in the middle of a vast field.

And that field was filled with soldiers.

There had to be a thousand tan-clad men and women, all standing in lines that stretched back into the distance, their faces made invisible in the night by some sort of dark mesh cloth. Black bubble-like machines hovered in the air, vast guns dangling from their bellies, their glassy curves reflecting the moon like watery planets. Robotic creatures, vaguely humanoid, stood strong amidst the ranks of soldiers, twenty feet tall at least. The field wore the hum of war in a thick buzzing mantle.

One of the hovering machines' belly-guns roared into life, jettisoning a white line of energy toward them, a sustained stream. Riddle's hand darted up, creating a massive blue shield. The blast hit the shield with a terrible scream, and Riddle clenched his jaw, pushing.

"Do something," he hissed to Hermione, a vein standing out on his forehead the longer he held the shield.

"I don't have a wand, if you remem –"

"Then do something else!"

Hermione considered the Timeglass – warded shut. She considered everything in her bag – useless for a getaway. She considered the bag itself – she could bundle herself and Riddle inside the damn thing, maybe, but God knew this army would find it somehow, and they'd be no better off upon getting back out.

She considered the general hopelessness of the situation. Her mind, pulsing and driven by the adrenalin she had never quite learned to control, could only muster one word: _nothing._

There was nothing to do.

She stepped forward and raised her hands. "We surrender!" she yelled.

"I didn't mean do _that_!" Riddle said as the machine's blast cut off. He lowered his wand, breathing hard, staring at Hermione as if he'd never seen her before.

"Names," said one of the soldiers on the front line, voice amplified as if by a Sonorus.

"I'm Penelope Clearwater," called Hermione. "This is Alfred Perkins."

Riddle shot her a disgusted glance. He couldn't believe she'd somehow come up with something _more _common-sounding than his own goddamned name.

The soldier muttered something to the man next to her, then turned back to the pair. "Our scanner is reading an array of magical objects on your person. Please throw your wands and all items of magic forward."

"I don't have a wand," Hermione called, but withdrew her bag from her jacket pocket and lobbed it over the pit rather unceremoniously. For a single, futile second, she hoped the Timeglass would do something mysterious as it landed, but nothing happened. She hoped to hell that Bansherwold had some sort of plan for reclaiming it, now that it was in these people's hands.

"Wand, Perkins. _Now_," said the soldier, her voice booming more loudly without her appearing to raise her voice in the least.

For a moment, with Hermione looking expectantly at him, Tom debated trying to take on the fight alone. A thousand heavily armed Muggles and their machine contraptions. Could he?

No. He couldn't. He was hopelessly outnumbered and had no idea what these Muggles had stolen from the magical world that they might use against him.

His pride turned white-hot with anger, a precious metal that would not melt.

Seething, he lobbed his wand forward. It arced over the pit, flipping tip-over-tail like a hatchet, and landed in the grass point-first right beside Hermione's bag.

One of the robot machines clicked loudly. It raised its thick barrel of a gun and aimed at the objects sitting there in the field.

Two pairs of eyes widened in horror.

The machine fired. A sleek canister with a blunt, bullet-like nose burst from the robot's arm, plunged into the earth beside the wand and the bag, and promptly blew up. A jet of white fire erupted into the sky from the point of impact, accompanied by a monster's roar. Neither Hermione nor Riddle could even blink, let alone lift their hands to their ears to muffle the sound, frozen in horror as they were.

The column of fire died abruptly, like a beam of light throttled by a thunderhead. A bar of black replaced it, cleaving Hermione's vision in two. She blinked rapidly, and the bar reasserted itself in mottled colors, like her vision was bruised by what she'd seen.

The only remainder: a black circle two feet wide where the items had lain.

It was silent again, save for the tinny whine in Hermione's ears in the aftermath of the roar.

She and Riddle burst into a run at the same time.

"Stop," ordered the Muggle, but made no actual move to subdue them. Made sense, thought Hermione with an electric kind of panic, because it wasn't as if she or Riddle could actually go anywhere or do anything. They were well and truly crippled.

Hermione vaulted over the crumbled wall's remains, darted around the pit, and fell to her knees in front of the circle of ash. "Oh, Merlin," she breathed, scrubbing her hands through the charcoal.

"No," Riddle snarled at it, dropping to the ground across from her. "No, no, no –" He tore at the charred circle, but nothing remained.

"The Timeglass," she said, looking up and meeting his eyes across the circle.

"My _wand!_" he spat at her, before swearing at length, frankly feeling too sick to his stomach even to be creative about the curse words that spilled from his lips. He could not tear his murderous gaze from her, either. It was her fault that his wand was gone. His wand, which he'd never allowed to leave his presence since he'd gotten the damn thing in the first place. His wand, the one thing that had ever told him he belonged anywhere, the first thing that had told him the magical world was his for the taking … incinerated like a worthless _stick_.

And with the channel for his power stopped up? He would burst without it. He would die without it. He was sure.

"The Timeglass," he said, finally letting himself care slightly about _that _little tiny fucking hiccup. He glanced to his right. The Muggles were advancing on them, a wave of uniforms. "No, the Villinger's Bond – Bansherwold must have it. It must have gone back to him."

Hermione let out a slow breath. Yes, of course, he was right. The second it left her entrusted care, in fact, it should have returned to Bansherwold. But Harry's Cloak … had Muggles legitimately _blown up_ one of the Deathly Hallows? How could that even be possible?

She reeled.

"On your feet," said the Muggle, now quite close, her voice no longer raised. She sounded tired. "We've been on a right merry chase for you two."

"Really?" Hermione said numbly, standing. "We've only just gotten here."

Riddle gave her another look of utter hatred, presumably for divulging anything about their states of being, but frankly she couldn't find it in herself to care. Without any shred of magic on her, she felt stranded, naked, young. It was as if she'd been cut somewhere deep inside, confidence bleeding out of the wound in a sick, personal sort of hemorrhage.

"Hands," the soldier said. Hermione extended her wrists, and after a moment, Riddle did the same.

"What are you going to do to us?" Hermione asked slowly.

The soldier slid a flexible metal cord around Hermione's wrists and pressed a button at its end. It automatically constricted, binding her wrists so tightly that her forearms clapped together. Only then did the soldier meet her eyes. "Don't play dumb," she said, her voice flat and unsympathetic and sneering, and Hermione, staring into the woman's night-dulled irises, could only think that they were more terrifying than any darkness she had seen before.

* * *

><p>The soldiers took them away in a black vehicle that zipped along ten feet or so off the ground, a vehicle sleeker and more elongated than the ones they'd seen in Rome. Riddle and Hermione were bundled into its back seat behind metal bars. They'd been restrained in several different manners, some of which seemed to Hermione to be complete overkill. Honestly: <em>chains, <em>wasn't that a bit archaic?

"Erm, where are we, exactly?" Hermione managed timidly after about fifteen minutes of travel. The driver – or, well, the man tapping buttons on the glass screen to make the thing go – glanced back at her between the bars and folded his arms in reply, hard bitterness curdled in his features like sour milk.

Hermione sighed and looked away. They were rushing along a dimly lit path in some sort of woods, flying faster than any broomstick she'd ever seen. Obviously, from the soldiers' accents, they were in England somewhere, but the accents had varied from person to person. They could be anywhere in the country.

She didn't have to wait long for an answer. Soon they jumped up thirty feet or so with a most disconcerting lurch, and as they started across the woods in earnest, the London skyline sprouted up in the distance, an achingly familiar silhouette.

A lump of loneliness swelled into Hermione's throat. It felt like half her innards had been torn out and replaced by a jumble of ice cubes. She wanted Harry and Ron here so badly. She would have settled for literally any other human being from before.

She cast Tom Riddle a look. He stared at his knees, expression impassive, eyes unreadable.

She amended her wish: any other human being except _that. _She still wasn't certain if _that _was entirely human, anyway. For God's sake, they'd survived how many time-jumps and near-death experiences together now? And still he wouldn't even look at her.

Hermione glanced back out of the vehicle's curved glass bubble-top and her breath caught in her throat. At first, she thought she must be seeing things, but the closer they got to London, the more she felt the urge to rub her eyes in disbelief. Something was clogging the air above the city. Something solid, something blocking the stars as a tree's leaves block sunlight. Like a distant cavalry of zeppelins.

They rushed closer, and Hermione realized: Not airships. Buildings.

A cloud of cubes floated a neat few kilometers above the city, hanging there bizarrely like Christmas ornaments on the clouds. She thought she could almost see lines trailing down from those cubes to London proper, hair-thin filaments from this distance.

"What the bloody hell?" murmured Riddle, apparently having noticed the development as well.

"Yep. You're heading to the Crown, you filthy Pomsites," said the driver with somewhat of a nasty chuckle, his voice strongly accented.

"'Pomsite'?" Hermione said, unsure what exactly that meant or if she'd heard him correctly. Then she remembered the doctor's words to her. Pom – person of magic. Apparently adapted to a slur now. Lovely.

The driver tapped a button on his screen, and the vehicle tilted, cruising upward into the sky. Hermione felt her weight shift backward, and she bit her lip hard, closing her eyes. Flight had never been her favorite method of transportation at the best of times. It certainly didn't help being a prisoner in a world that wasn't hers.

"The Crown," Riddle said. "Would you mind explaining what exactly that entails, please?"

Hermione was surprised for a second that he'd phrased the question so courteously, but of course, Riddle had once been subtle and charming, hadn't he? He knew as well as she that an insulting interrogation wouldn't work on this Muggle.

The driver laughed, and just when his laughs seemed to be petering out, he started laughing afresh. This, Hermione mused, did not exactly bode well.

"Oh, feckin' Jesus Christ," he wheezed. "You're in for a right time."

He tapped a button on the glass board. Their angle lessened, and they shot forward toward the buildings over London.

* * *

><p>"C'mon, out," said a tan-clad soldier with seemingly no regard at all for the thousands of meters separating them from a bloody splatting end. In the night, the distance looked eternal, a bottomless pit.<p>

Rolling his eyes, the soldier yanked first Riddle, then Hermione across the terrifyingly narrow walkway to the metal platform.

Riddle looked up at the building across the platform. Bleak, blocky letters across the door read _THE CROWN, _but its appearance still gave him no hint whatsoever as to what the place was or what it meant.

"See you never," called the driver from behind them, a childishly inadequate parting shot if you asked Riddle. Then again, it also wasn't Riddle zooming off free as a bird into the night, so there was that.

Their guards shoved them forward. Granger squeaked as the nose of her soldier's gun prodded the side of her neck. Riddle found himself angry on her behalf, since she seemed to have relinquished all anger in favor of this obnoxiously docile, whimpering, quivering act. She could have decimated them, had she had a wand. _Muggles._

One of them nudged Riddle with his gun, and Riddle jerked his shoulder, knocking it away instinctively.

"Watch it, Pomsite," spat one of the guards. Riddle almost laughed, but stopped out of self-preservation. Still, though. From the disgust and vehemence which dripped from the word "Pomsite," he had already inferred its apparent cultural connotation, but as the term had no attached significance to him personally, it sort of sounded hilarious.

"My mistake," Riddle said smoothly, lowering his bound wrists, the words tasting poisonous on his tongue. He didn't fancy being attacked. No; he'd stick this out and find a way to _get _out. There had to be a way. There was always a way: Riddle was built to survive.

It was freezing up here, unsurprisingly. The winds ripped high and the drizzle didn't so much fall as drift every which way, frosting the Granger girl's massive hair like tiny crystals, greasing the metal so as to make every step perilous and slick.

Riddle made a note to learn how to fly _without _a broomstick.

"Don't try to make a run for it," cautioned a guard, which made no sense whatsoever to Riddle, as the only options for running were into that building, their clear destination already, or off the edge.

Hermione, however, in her terrified state, understood perfectly what that meant: whatever waited inside was worse than death.

She let out a tiny noise and found herself biting her lip so hard her mouth filled with the taste of blood.

At least it was warm inside. The massive glass doors slid shut behind them, leaving them in a tiny antechamber facing a blank gray wall.

A soldier said, "Open." The wall's single door slid wide, and Riddle and Hermione were shoved in unceremoniously.

Hermione looked around as the soldiers followed them in. They stood in a room with no furnishings, no windows, nothing except a row of metal instruments hanging on the wall. Each instrument was identical, a long gunmetal rod.

Two of the soldiers retrieved instruments, and Hermione found her heart beating in her curled-up fingers. Torture. They were going to be tortured and beaten. Why? What could possibly be the purpose?

But the soldiers approached them and tapped the metal wrappings on their hands instead. They went limp as spaghetti, and the cord fell from Hermione's wrists. She flexed her hands, swallowing. Maybe this was to be civil. Maybe they wanted some sort of answer from her, or from Riddle, though why that would require the damn Royal Brigade to retrieve them, she had no idea. She didn't even know what information they could possibly provide. If the Muggles had been searching for answers for three decades, surely they had to know most things by now.

The soldier before Hermione tapped the gunmetal rod three times on its end, and a pair of sharp blades popped from it. Her fear jumped back into life, but only for a second, because he started cutting away her clothes. Hermione could do nothing then but close her eyes and try and remind herself that she was a human being.

Ten minutes later, they'd examined every inch of her naked body thoroughly for enchantments and charms. So thoroughly, in fact, that she was starting to wonder if they'd somehow discover she'd had her teeth shrunk years ago.

She felt humiliated, used, and her clothes sat on the floor in a shredded heap. Relief blew over her like a gentle breeze the second they slipped a papery robe over her shoulders.

Then they started on her hair.

* * *

><p>The soldiers led two bald teenagers through the room's other door. They were between buildings, heading to a taller one that loomed overhead, blunt and monolithic like a dam's wall. The drizzle had turned into a storm. Thunder trundled by, seemed to steamroll through Hermione's bones. They'd taken blood from her; she wasn't sure how much, but she felt queasy, and she tottered with each step.<p>

The rain hit her naked scalp hard. Her head felt too light on her neck and she felt colder and colder with each breath in. The papery robe was water-resistant, but she couldn't feel anything below mid-calf.

She stumbled a bit, and somewhat to her surprise, Riddle's hand clasped her shoulder and kept her upright. She nodded in his direction without looking at him. He didn't look at her either. In fact, neither of them had even faced the other since the soldiers had stripped them.

Hermione wasn't sure why she wasn't crying. Perhaps because the sky was doing it for her.

They entered the next building and found themselves looking up at a vast wall split into a grid. It must have been a hundred cells across and up. Each of the grid's three-foot squares had a circular opening, and what looked like a tube beyond that opening.

"They're in eighty-one," said one of the soldiers. Another shoved Hermione and Riddle toward the right end of the grid, and when they'd walked long enough that Hermione's feet screamed for relief from the rough stone, the soldiers pulled her to a stop.

One of their guards walked to the non-grid wall and entered something on a glass screen. The ground under Hermione and Riddle suddenly slid upward, pushing them toward the dark ceiling, grinding to a halt in front of one of the grid squares.

"Fold your arms over your chest, get in feet-first, and slide," commanded a soldier.

Riddle finally looked down at Hermione. She looked back at him. He looked strange without hair. It did not make him look more like the Voldemort she knew. It made him look a child, his dark eyes overlarge, his ears jutting out from the contours of his pale skull like handles to some strange trophy.

Then he crossed his arms, stepped into the circular opening, and pushed forward. He slid down the tube and out of sight.

Hermione peered after him. It looked steep. She dreaded where she would end up if she followed.

"Bloody go. We don't have all night," snapped a soldier from the ground.

She closed her eyes, folded her arms, and slipped in.

The rush was so steep she felt as if she might as well be falling. The frictionless material, at least, didn't tear at her skin as she'd anticipated it would. It felt as if she were sliding down ice, numb and cold, but it seemed to stretch slightly, definitely some flexible substance rather than the glass she'd thought it was.

The tube twined around like some awful roller-coaster ride. She tried to keep her eyes open, but it was only lashing rain and snatches of night sky and gray mist and the occasional glimpse of London's bones far beneath. It whirled and she clenched her eyes shut and _fuck, _she was so lightheaded, Merlin, how much blood _had _they taken?

The tube deposited her onto a plush surface. She curled up in a ball and realized she was crying now in earnest, hot useless tears melting out of her eyes and into her cupped hands. She didn't _want_ to open her eyes. She didn't want to see what fresh horror awaited her. She was helpless and alone and this world didn't just disregard her, it actively hated her. It wanted her to get out, and she wanted to get out twice as much.

Of course, eventually, she had to open her eyes. She found herself in a glass cell, six by six feet, whose floor was some sort of stretchy, silvery, woven material. Riddle sat in a cell adjacent to hers, his knobby knees pulled up to his chest. In fact, the whole room was nothing but tiny divided glass sections, like they were rats in a case at the Apothecary waiting for adoption from some force above.

Hermione looked up. The ceiling was closing above her, the last sight of the tube vanishing behind it.

"What is this?" she whispered, curling up in a fashion similar to Riddle. Tiny holes, she was glad to see, had been bored in the glass wall, making conversation possible.

He simply shook his head.

"It's the Crown, of course," said a voice to Hermione's other side. She turned around. A woman sat on the other side of the glass wall, her incredibly long hair crow-black, her eyes cornflower-blue. What looked to have once been a robe sat in tatters at the edge of her cell. She sat unapologetic in her nakedness, her small breasts and concave stomach emphasizing the jutting lines of her ribs. Her hipbones were sharp as broken china.

"Where were you transferred from, then?" the woman said. "Uncooperative colony members, were you?"

"I … excuse me?"

"No? Vigilantes, maybe? Violent crime?" The woman's nose wrinkled.

"What's she asking?" Riddle's voice said from past Hermione.

"Got it. Pro-wizard propaganda," the woman said, snapping her fingers.

"I …" Hermione shook her head. "What did _you_ do?"

"Unlicensed breeding," sighed the woman.

"Erm."

"Look, will you tell me why you're here or not?"

"I don't know," Hermione said helplessly.

The woman frowned. "What?"

"We … have amnesia," Hermione invented. "He and I. We woke up surrounded by soldiers with no idea what we'd done."

She blinked a few times. "Pensieve anywhere near by?"

"Nope."

"Well, then. Odd. And that's pretty unfortunate, to be frank, because you're never going to find out why you're here." The woman stretched out, yawning.

"Why didn't they shave your head?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, they did. When I got dropped in here four years ago."

Hermione stared. "What?" she said, although she'd heard perfectly clearly and she knew what this meant. She was honestly just hoping the woman would say, "Just kidding!"

No such good fortune. "Four years. Had my child four years ago. Serena." Her eyes softened, but hardened again almost instantly. "So you've forgotten what the Crown does," said the woman. "Sorry you had to end up in here with that sort of shit luck."

"What _does_ it do, exactly?" said Riddle.

The woman pointed downward. "You're sitting on what it does."

Hermione examined the silvery mesh fibers, which – now that she looked more closely – seemed to glimmer with colors that darted away as soon as she could identify them. "What is it?"

"Nonstop collection. They take your blood, wire this up to your signature, and voila."

Hermione shook her head. "Sorry, I've no idea what that means."

The woman unleashed an impatient sigh. "They withdrew your blood, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then they'll extract from your DNA all the information about your magical signature they need to turn you into an energy source. They take it through the floor. They've probably already started collecting it, in fact." The woman waved one hand nonchalantly. "Muggles needed to solve their energy crisis, and they figured out we're little capsules of insane amounts of energy. I power around half of Frankfurt, myself. See, they take our wands, and the energy's got no place to go. They twist it all down this material, whatever it is, and pipe it across the world. Works as fast as nerves, the transmission."

Hermione's tongue had turned to ash, or stone.

"The various wizard colonies have something similar, but it only works at nighttime, when they're sleeping. It's a more passive sort of thing. In exchange for their cooperation, see, they're allowed to live in controlled environments, the colonies. It's not this sort of prison. Not as if it's a normal, happy life, though – they're watched every minute of every day." The woman arched a thin eyebrow. "Just like us, though there's not much to watch in the Crown. Welcome to living hell. We get one meal a day, thanks to global rationing, crop poisonings, species die-offs. And we've got three one-hour periods of natural light, one at dawn, one at midday, and one at sunset. It's you and your mind in here. No breaks. No getting out, ever. Get ready to waste away to nothingness for the good of mankind."

Hermione looked up, wondering if somehow she could climb out.

"The walls are slick as water, and it's a mile and a half drop if by some miracle you did pop over the top. Don't bother," said the woman. Her eyes finally softened. "I really am sorry. The world's not a nice place to wake up to, not these days. Not anymore." She lifted one hand. "By the way, I'm Glen."

"Hermione."

"Nice to meet you, Hermione."

Hermione swallowed and nodded. "I … thank you, for telling me." She glanced around at the other dozen or so cells in the room. Besides Glen and Riddle, there were four others. One – and her heart dropped to see it – had flame-red Weasley hair.

She turned back to Riddle, curling up into a tighter ball than ever, feeling like she needed to physically hold her body together or she might just burst with unfairness, with terror, or with despair. "Do you have a plan?" she whispered, hoping beyond all hope.

He gave one bitter laugh and met her eyes. The second of eye contact told her all she needed to know.

* * *

><p>She slept only after thirty-six hours of futile, desperate thinking. Riddle held out longer. He went two and a half days, stubble dutifully sprouting into place to remind him that he was only human. Then he collapsed.<p>

When he woke up, he wanted to kill something. More specifically, he wanted to kill everything. He was shocked that his sheer anger hadn't shattered all the glass.

When he had said as much, the boy in the cell next to him, Geoff, had helpfully supplied a reason: "They disable your magical signature, actually." The boy's brown hair was so long he had knotted it, and he had a full-fledged beard. He couldn't have been more than sixteen. "You can't even release uncontrolled bursts like you do when you're a kid. I mean, I guess you can, but it goes into the floortwine, like everything else."

Floortwine. Riddle had tried to untwine it, picking at the fibers with his fingernails, but to no avail. He'd also, upon realizing exactly what proportion of the day Geoff spent babbling, considered bashing his head against the wall until he simply died. The boy made Granger look like the conversational partner of the century. Overeager Hufflepuff to the core; Riddle could practically smell it.

Though he doubted Hogwarts was still open. According to his and Granger's assorted cellmates, everything had changed. Riddle had never concerned himself with Muggle politics, but he now knew that England's Prime Minister was a wizard-hating extremist, as were the President of the Far Ex-American Territories, the High Elector of China, the Minister of the Seaboard States, the Grand Officer of the Korean Confederation, and the Something-That-Sounded-Like-a-Thinly-Veiled-Euphem ism-for-Dictator of Russia. His personal opinion was that all these Muggle rulers should just be neatly assassinated, but Geoff had laughed at the suggestion, as if it wouldn't be perfectly simple.

"It _wouldn't_ be simple. They're in the process of setting up satellite-broadcasted Anti-Apparition Wards," the girl in the corner, Em, had told him glumly. Judging by her short, shaggy hair, she'd been the most recent arrival before Riddle and Hermione.

"And what exactly does that mean?" Riddle said.

"No Apparating anywhere on the planet," Hermione murmured.

Riddle was almost certain he was going to go insane. This _was_ insane, after all, completely so. The very notion that he'd fallen prey to Muggle contraptions stunned him, offended him so deeply that he was almost glad he had this much damn free time to adjust to it.

Here, he didn't quite feel like a person at all, let alone himself. He felt animalized. He shat in the corner while the others looked away, and the ground, whatever the hell it was, disposed of it somehow. He smelled godawful, as could be expected, given the total lack of hygienic materials. He mechanically ate the morsels that dropped into his cell. He was almost constantly hungry, as these idiot Muggles didn't quite seem to understand how much food an adult (well, practically-adult) male needed to eat in order to not wither away to nothingness.

Granger kept complaining of stomach pains. This brought to light an uncomfortable question: if illness happened to take one of them, would they just waste away and die right there, their remains disposed of by the floortwine like so much refuse? It was surely too much to ask for medical care.

A week passed. Peach fuzz grew onto his and Hermione's heads.

Riddle wondered incessantly what Bansherwold was planning. After a week and a half, he deigned to broach the subject with Granger.

"Yes, I've been thinking about it too," she said, her eyes serious. He much preferred her like this, quiet and subdued and intellectual, no flighty Gryffindor stupidity.

"All right. Thoughts?" he said.

"We don't know much for certain, of course," she said. "We know he brought about the discovery of the Wizarding World almost singlehandedly, but we don't know why."

"A peculiar kind of domination," Riddle said.

"Maybe not domination. Remember, Bansherwold went forward in time to –"

"Save his love, yes, that rubbish, I know." Riddle grimaced. "Look, since when have you known legends to be accurate?"

Hermione opened her mouth and most definitely did not mention the Deathly Hallows. She closed it again after four seconds of awkward silence.

"He said he wanted to be Time's _governor_," Riddle muttered, apparently not noticing – or perhaps not particularly caring about – the lapse in conversation. "Or that he already was, rather. He's said his method is achieved through anonymity, but dammit, how do you rule the world through anonymity?"

"It's always somewhat anonymous forces that have the greatest impact," Hermione said. "Love is one of them, in a way. If – _ow._" She gripped her stomach.

His eyes fell dispassionately to the area between her ribs. "How long has that been happening now?"

"Since we bloody got here," she said, grimacing, massaging her abdomen. "I thought it was just hunger pangs, and then I thought it was … well, you know, cramps, but it's not. You know, maybe it's actually something about this place."

"What are you expecting?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe the floor will magically open due to your gastronomical inabilities," Riddle said tonelessly.

"You're hysterical," Hermione shot back, the deepest of scowls on her face. "Anyway, if Bansherwold is thinking global control, which world does he want to take over? He could have his pick of them, couldn't he? He could want to rule the Earth in year 3400, for goodness' sake, and do it, I'm sure." She sighed, closing her eyes. "But honestly, given his proclivity to jump timelines like he's using the bloody Floo Network, I can't really imagine we're here for anything more than detainment while Bansherwold continues whatever the hell it is that he's doing."

"Which is …?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it?" Hermione said softly. "As well as, if he's going to get us out of here at all, which I assume he is, why do it later rather than now? Why's he leaving us to rot?"

Riddle gritted his teeth and cracked his knuckles and made any number of other motions to indicate his displeasure that did not actually help the situation in the least.

Hermione closed her eyes, kneading her forehead. The picture of the young Bansherwold's face sprang into her mind, and his voice reminded, _Patience, Hermione Granger, is a virtue._

* * *

><p>Two and a half weeks. He was getting madder. She was getting quieter. He was starting to rage inwardly without cessation. She sat and stared at nothing a lot of the time.<p>

Glen sang, sometimes. She had a nice voice.

Geoff sang, sometimes, too. His singing voice sounded something like a House Elf having a seizure.

All Tom and Hermione ever did was think.

He'd blown up at her several times for having lost him his wand. She'd refuted his argument heatedly and soundly – so soundly, in fact, that he found himself shifting the blame almost entirely to the Muggle soldiers they'd encountered that day. Still, he nursed the loss of the wand as someone else might nurse the loss of a friend. Lucky, then, that he did not have those.

Hermione, on the other hand, sometimes stared into the glass at night and saw a hint of her own reflection and imagined Ron and Harry there with her. Sometimes she thought the stomach pains were loneliness, pure and simple.

She thought about anonymity quite a bit. "_First," _Bansherwold had said, "_you have to be comfortable with anonymity." _Was this all some sort of cruel, protracted lesson? Nothing better for an inflated ego than the world locking you away and thoroughly ignoring you.

Hermione had always been comfortable with anonymity. At school as a young girl, she'd literally hid behind stacks of books on many an occasion, and not with any secret desire that someone might seek her out, either. These hiding-places were bliss, partially because young children were often crueler than they had any right to be, but also because she'd found even then that what she put into her mind was more important than what was waiting for her in the social world, whether that was a blank stare, an active dislike, or a nickname of Bucktooth or Bush-head.

"_Then," _he'd said, _"you have to fall in love with it."_

To a certain extent, Hermione thought she'd fulfilled that particular criterion at Hogwarts. She'd certainly brought her desire for aloneness to Hogwarts. Of course, perhaps by that point she'd learned to want what she had; perhaps the world had trained her to want to be alone, given that no other option had ever presented itself. But she privately thought it was more than that. Her refuge through the years was always solitude, no matter how much she'd grown to love being around Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and the rest. She was still her best version of herself around a book rather than around a person. A book could not pick you apart fault from fault. A book could not stare at you expectantly while you fumbled for the right words and found only the wrong ones. A book was unconditionally loving.

Also, by the end of fourth year, Hermione didn't think she could have been sicker of fame. It had nearly lost her Molly Weasley's respect. She would have been perfectly happy to have been anonymous as Victor's date to the Yule Ball; it certainly would've helped prevent yet another fight with Ron, and she hadn't needed the stupid event to make a connection with the intelligent, somewhat bashful Quidditch star. After that year, the scraps of quiet time to herself that she'd found had become even more valuable.

But the last … _"Then you have to become it._"

How could anyone become anonymous down to that truest, deepest part of themselves where magic lived?

* * *

><p><em>Hermione's feet were cold and bare and buried to the ankles in dirt.<em>

_She stood outside amid the dusk. Her whole body shook. She was naked. She was always naked in dreams, these days. The wind drew its spidery fingers down her back._

_She was supposed to knock on the door. She wanted to knock on the door. She reached out for the door …_

_One knock and she doubled over._

_A second knock and she gasped._

_A third knock _and she clawed back into consciousness, her stomach tearing open with pain, her mouth gaping wide and emitting the most horrible sound that had ever come from her, somewhere between a retch and a scream and a desperate "HELP" –

"Granger!" said Riddle, his hands flat against the glass. "What's –"

Her hands pressed against her stomach, she was so thin, too thin, her stomach was bursting and twisting and then her hand found something hard right through the skin, a lump buried in her abdomen, faint but noticeable, and she looked up at Riddle with agony and with horror.

"It's there," she whispered, and she nearly blacked out as it throbbed there in her stomach.

Bansherwold hadn't created the Villinger's Bond to himself. _He'd reforged it to her._

They'd taken her clothes and the Timeglass had reappeared on her person the most permanent way it could.

She clutched at it and a whining noise carded through the air, shredding it like knives, but something was different this time, because the pain was receding, for once, not growing stronger, and Hermione huddled up in a ball and wanted to disappear and somehow her mind was fixated on a shack in the middle of a field and Alengurd Bansherwold saying, "_Shame we missed 2057,"_ and then warmth exploded through her body and she was catapulting backward and upward and landing flat on her back on a sofa in a place she had last seen completely destroyed.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, on the other hand, was sitting in his glass cell, staring, horrified, at the spot where she'd been.

And he was alone. Completely alone. There was no one who cared who he was, no one who cared what he had been, and no one who cared what he would be.

* * *

><p><strong>"Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone." <strong>

**- Alan Lightman**


	8. 2057

**Prepare for some science-times. Hoo hoo hoo I *really* hope you guys are as nerdy as I'm assuming you are.**

**PROMPT UPDATE, WOOo. Go team. Most humble thanks as always to all who reviewed.**

**Small note – I'm planning on re-uploading the earliest chapters without the hiccup of tom's shoe being missing. I've gotten a few readers along the way being like "…what." And all it takes is one conjuring charm to fix it, so. XD double thanks for the reminder to those who mentioned it.**

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><p><strong>"All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that."<strong>

**- Abraham Lincoln**

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><p>Hermione woke up warm and comfortable beneath a soft blanket.<p>

She blinked a few times, the ceiling coming into focus. She remembered the Timeglass twisting in her stomach. She remembered landing on something soft … then nothing. She must've passed out. Unsurprising, given the agony.

Where was she now, then? In the same place?

It took one glance to the side for her to recognize her surroundings, although frankly, it qualified as unrecognizable. When last she'd seen the cottage in the middle of the field, "destroyed" would have been a generous description for the place. "Rubble" seemed a more appropriate moniker.

Now, a fire glowed in the hearth, and several warm torches flickered around the wholly intact walls, which were decorated with two paintings, both – to Hermione's disappointment – landscapes rather than portraits. A thick woven rug lay atop the clean stone floor, and the furnishings were cherry wood, red and brown cloth, cozy colors. Something smelled delicious, like buttered bread, although Hermione had no idea if her stomach would hold anything down even if she did find the source of the scent.

But her stomach didn't hurt anymore, the ache of hunger excepted.

She sat up feebly and pushed the blanket down to her feet with one hand, the other darting to her navel. Somewhat to her alarm, she found she no longer wore the thin robe from the Crown; instead, a soft woolen shirt the color of cream was draped over her, loose black sweatpants swallowing her legs. Hermione ran her hand over her abdomen, searching for the lump she remembered so vividly, like a tumor or perhaps a weapon embedded in her flesh.

"Not there," said a voice. Hermione jolted in place, twisting around at once.

Behind the sofa, Alengurd Bansherwold stood beside a tall, black stove. He wore plain Muggle clothes, dark jeans and a grey knit jumper that reminded Hermione uncomfortably of one of Molly Weasley's. As he prodded his wand toward a cast-iron pan, its contents sizzled, sending a fresh wave of buttery scent rolling through the air. Hermione's mouth flooded. For three weeks, she'd been eating the same stale, tasteless conglomeration of God knew what nutritional ingredients. This smell was torture.

"Go ahead and check your stomach," Bansherwold said. "I should apologize. It was hasty."

Hermione pulled up the hem of her shirt. Near the bottom of her sunken stomach curved a long white scar, as if someone had given her an overenthusiastic appendectomy. She stared at it numbly. It seemed someone else's skin, someone else's injury.

"It shouldn't hurt anymore. Does it?" he asked, giving her an oddly worried look.

She shook her head slowly, narrowing her eyes.

"Good," he said. "I was just getting this." He held up a small pouch that Hermione could only assume held the Timeglass. "It's a shame, you know. If it were just a bit smaller, you might've been able to vomit it up. As it is, I had to cut it out and do some mending."

Yes. A shame.

Replying with one of her most pointed silences, Hermione gave the cottage's interior a second look. On the floor in the far corner lay a lumpy-looking mattress. Hermione imagined it could hardly be big enough to fit Bansherwold's body, tall as he was. An icebox lay in the opposite corner, above which dangled various kitchen implements and what looked like cured meats.

Upon closer inspection, she saw that the clock on the wall beside the icebox was not, in fact, a clock at all. It matched the contraption on Bansherwold's wrist, a glass face with graduated notches, filled up about a sixth of the way with dark red liquid. The sight of it made her palpably uncomfortable for a reason she couldn't place. She looked back to Bansherwold, who had turned back to his griddle on the stove, whistling genially.

Listening to the cheerful tune, Hermione felt the depths to which she mistrusted him sinking even further.

She tried to stand up, but her legs trembled and gave way almost instantly, blades of grass beneath the fragile husk of her torso. She landed back on the sofa hard. Merlin, when had she last eaten?

"Give me five minutes," Bansherwold said, as if hearing the thought. "It's almost done." He glanced back over his shoulder at her. "And yes, it's safe to eat, and no, I haven't poisoned it, and yes, it was cooked entirely without the slave labor of House Elves."

He smiled cheekily at her, receiving an instinctive frown before she wondered how the hell he'd known to make that disclaimer in the first place. In any case, she liked to believe she wasn't foolish enough to eat something he'd cooked.

But she was starving. The hunger gnawed at her stomach like a determined rodent. She thought she might actually start drooling; really, the only thing keeping her from attacking Bansherwold for the food – well, besides her apparent inability to stay on her feet – was self-preservation. He was dangerous, she reminded herself sternly, and not to be trusted, regardless of mouthwatering foodstuffs near his person.

As he turned back to the stove, sudden dizziness slammed into Hermione. Biting back a vocal reaction, she keeled over onto the sofa, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes shut, and the teetering wobbling motion of the room settled, replaced by the wet taste of nausea.

A voice spoke into her darkness. "Where are you from, Ms. Granger?"

"England," she said instantly and irritably, not opening her eyes.

He chuckled. "I assumed. I meant which part, but no matter. Since you bring up country of origin, I myself am from the United States, originally."

It was hard to care about anything but the lack of food in her mouth, but luckily, Hermione's mind was still in the habit of drinking in information. She found herself listening somewhat numbly.

"I was born in 1859," he said. Hermione winced – that was staggeringly long ago. "I was a Civil War brat," he continued, "orphaned in the war's last year by one of many pointless battles. I'm still not sure which, not that I particularly care. All I remember is that the second my mother found out about my father's death, she jumped off a bridge, and, as you might imagine, did not return. Not that she was particularly present before that point, having been institutionalized once or twice for believing in magic. She wasn't crazy, of course, just perceptive – although the asylums themselves did their best to change her state of sanity. Dreadful places." He sighed. "In any case, because we lived out in the countryside, it took a while for anyone to notice I was the only one still living in that house. I had no idea what to do or where to go, or what exactly it meant that whenever I cried, the kettle would boil, or various objects would crumble to ash, or birds would flock to the windows screaming. Neither of my parents were of magical blood, so I was completely in the dark."

_Bansherwold is a Muggle-born? _Hermione digested the thought as she heard an egg cracking. She'd assumed he was Wizarding because of his name. If he was really Muggle-born … had he been adopted by a wizard family, maybe?

When Bansherwold continued, his tone remained light and conversational. "I was seven when I found my way to New York through a sequence of events involving dumb luck and pretending to be various people's children. I was eight when I smuggled myself across the pond on a massive fishing vessel and landed myself in London. I was nine when I started using sorcery in earnest, and redubbed myself how I thought a sorcerer should be titled. Hence my rather unwieldy name, about which I'm sure you've wondered by this point."

Ah. So that was why.

More hissing and crackling came from the griddle. Hermione gulped back an ocean of saliva, opened her eyes, and peered over her shoulder. Bansherwold was conjuring a plate and levitating some sort of bready eggy concoction from the stove onto it.

"Here," he said, carrying her plate over. "You must be hungry." Eyeing her suspicious expression, he sighed and forked a bite into his own mouth first. "The ever-practical Hermione Granger," he mumbled through the food. "Relax, for once. I already told you it's safe." He swallowed it, and Hermione's resolve shriveled. The second the plate touched the sofa beside her, she wolfed it down so quickly she could feel it burning all the way down her throat. Then the fork was clattering back to the plate. She wasn't even sure she remembered chewing.

"More?" he asked, giving her a glimpse of his white teeth in a genuine half-smile.

"Thanks," she croaked.

He took the plate back to the stove and continued his odd little monologue. Hermione had no idea why he was divulging the information, exactly, but if it meant anything she could use as leverage, she wasn't going to pass it up.

"London, 1868. Not a pleasant place, to say the very least, so all things considered, I was quite lucky to last as long as I did. I found a spot in an abandoned building, happened across a worn black overcoat that became my best friend, and somehow, as if by magic," he said wryly, "never got caught stealing anything. Even in the dead of winter, I didn't freeze, another happy survival tactic probably attributable to rudimentary warming spells, though at the time I almost believed I had the Second Industrial Revolution to thank for it. Everything was belching ash, spewing cinders, humming with the roar of machinery. It never turned off, it seemed. Everything was trying to fool you into thinking you were warm enough, safe enough, alive enough, but really the city was just spilling poison out its infernal cracks. I'd walk over corpses most days, completely unfazed after a point. They stopped mattering after a while."

More eggs cracking.

Hermione pulled the blanket back up, and wrapped it around herself. She settled against the sofa's cushy armrest and turned shrewd eyes back on Bansherwold.

"I turned eleven on February 9th," he said. "Got a letter from Hogwarts that day, which … I mean, in retrospect, the idea that they sent me a _letter _is frankly hilarious, given my childhood illiteracy. I used the thing to start a fire. The two that arrived the next day, and the four the day after that, received the same treatment. I began to suspect something was amiss when I woke up blanketed in letters, but what was I supposed to do? It wasn't as if I knew anyone who could read. Didn't know anyone at all, in fact. A couple of other street children had once tried to rob me of my coat, so I'd broken a few of their legs. No one dared come near me after that."

Bansherwold paused to whistle a light tune, stirring the pan again. "By the way, did you know that until 1889, Time magic was classified as Dark magic? It's all rather arbitrary."

"Yes," Hermione said, watching his narrow back, his easy movements, wondering about the air of calm that rested over him. "I did know that." She thought privately that she would almost rather he be making his usual infuriating cryptic statements about life and the future than divulging his entire sordid past. The blasé attitude he seemed to have about discussing it was twice as disconcerting. It was more than blasé, though; it was … "Sorry, but why do you seem so _happy_?" she said.

He looked back at her, looking surprised but amused. His eyes were warm. "You're here."

Hermione sputtered loudly, turning redder than the fire's old coals. "Excuse me, _what_?"

"Anyway," Bansherwold said, completely ignoring her reaction, "eventually, my Hogwarts letter was hand-delivered and read aloud to me. At that point, I was sleeping in a gutter rather near Big Ben. And actually, at that point, it was only a week until term began."

_Hogwarts was cutting it a bit close on the delivery, there, _Hermione thought, settling further down into the sofa as the splotchy redness slowly faded from her cheeks. Bansherwold scooped another helping onto her plate and placed it into her waiting hands. This time around, Hermione took the effort to chew, to taste the salt and the texture of it. She carefully kept her eyes fixed on her food.

"In prompt fashion, I was whisked off to Diagon Alley," Bansherwold said. "There, I was given a room at the Leaky Cauldron and money to purchase my supplies. The deliverer returned on September the first to guide me to King's Cross."

After a ruminative pause, he perched on the other end of the sofa and said quietly, "You know, I don't believe a single human being has ever been as blissfully happy as I was that day. There's something about having nothing at all, and suddenly having a world before you. A train is a magnificent thing."

Hermione glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and for a split instant saw a lost boy looking down at his knees.

She blinked, and he was gone, replaced by the young man with unreadable features.

"King's Cross had been open sixteen years at that point, and Platform 9¾ was still relatively new," Bansherwold said. "I boarded with all the others, was sorted into Ravenclaw, and the rest is as they say."

"History, yes." Hermione set down her fork, finished all too quickly once more. "When did you start using the Dark Arts, then?" she asked cautiously.

"Soon after arriving. The world was rather different back then, Hermione. Physical discipline was common; practically expected, even. Detention? Our detention was being shackled up in the dungeons for a couple days, although admittedly, it would take a rather impressive stunt to deserve that rather than a simple beating." He rubbed his chin, seeming distant. "Anyway, yes, a darker world altogether. And from the start, everything interested me. Everything was my favorite subject. School was a luxury that hardly anybody could afford to complain about, least of all me, so I considered it a personal obligation to learn everything available. It helped that the so-called "Restricted Section" did not yet exist, although it took a while for me to need the library, as I naturally had to learn how to read first." He chuckled.

She stared at him, aghast. "If you didn't know how to read, how did you do any of your schoolwork?"

"I learned quickly."

"Right." Hermione tried to keep her eyes from narrowing. "And when did you start plotting world domination?"

"Oh, I didn't. It was thrust upon me, as these things go," he said vaguely, waving a hand.

Hermione opened her mouth to say that no, these things usually do not go that way at all, but she closed it again, frowning. Harry's destiny to save the Wizarding World had been thrust upon him, after all … well, to save it temporarily. The damn place seemed determined not to be saved. In fact, Hermione found herself glumly wondering how it had managed complete isolation as long as it had. Memory charms and wards did the trick up to a point, but she supposed even without Bansherwold's little stunts in Rome and Paris, something would have tipped the Muggles off eventually, especially with this "internet" business.

"Going to tell me why you're intent on destroying the Wizarding World, then?" she mumbled.

Bansherwold sighed, standing from his spot on the sofa. "It's not destruction. I'm accelerating a process through its paces. Necessary groundwork."

"What?"

"You'll understand later."

Her brown eyes blazed with anger. "Bansherwold, if I hear one more version of that bloody phrase from your mouth, I swear to Merlin I'll –"

"I've already asked you to call me Alen. But yes, sorry, go on, what will you do?"

"… hurt you," she finished lamely, glaring up at him.

"How, exactly?" he said, looking genuinely puzzled.

"I will punch you in the teeth, that's how."

"I mean, in reality, I think you'd find that rather difficult," he said, holding up his wand, "but feel free to try, I suppose."

"Speaking of which," she said, "what the hell have you done with _my_ wand?"

"All in time."

_That's it. _She catapulted off the sofa, lunging at him. He laughed and caught her by the upper arms, pinning them to her sides as he held her at arm's length. "Good Lord, Hermione. Please, this is extremely ill-advised. You're recovering. As much as I appreciate the unintentional comedy –"

She gritted her teeth. "I hate you."

Something in his eyes faded, his smile with it. He released her, and she stood there a foot from him, looking up into his strange multicolored eyes, still seething.

"Tell me about the Timeglass," she said through her clenched teeth.

"As you wish."

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><p>Tom Riddle stared at the space where she'd been. He felt adrift.<p>

It was strange to feel anything in reaction to her disappearance, he mused. But he really hadn't realized how accustomed he'd grown to her simple presence, the mindless squabbles and debates during the day, the discussions of how they'd get out and when. Even the sudden lack of disapproving stares at his death threats to these Muggles, Bansherwold, et al felt amiss.

Tom Riddle preferred aloneness, of course. He had only ever been honest when he was alone.

Well, no, that wasn't true. He'd been honest when Dumbledore had come to visit him in his childhood, though the air of disapproval washing from Dumbledore had been overpowering, like a too-strong perfume, suffocating. He'd learned rather quickly not to be that honest with anyone again.

He didn't understand the problem. So he liked causing pain. Was that really so bad, or even surprising? He'd grown up around pain. He'd seen everyone in power cause pain, the matron at the orphanage and her discipline, the bigger kids at school and their gleeful bullying, the war generals in the papers and their daily orders for murder. Power and pain went hand in hand, and Tom went hand in hand with power. That was simply the state of things.

At first he'd simply assumed everyone in the Wizarding World would be the same way. What an unpleasant surprise, learning that they followed the example of men like the fuddy-duddy Dumbledore, like the hilariously incompetent Dippet, like the gullible and slimy Slughorn. Not an ounce of backbone in the lot of them.

Of course, the second he'd learned how one was _supposed_ to act, he'd adopted it seamlessly, an intricate disguise. He turned from quiet childhood terror to equally-quiet beacon of model behavior. A new leaf just for Dumbledore, though the man never bought the act, of course.

Actually, now that he thought about it, he'd been circumstantially forced to be rather honest with Granger, hadn't he?

Well. Be that as it may, she was gone, and now there was no one who could understand his particular panic, his dread, at being stranded here. Worse, he had to force himself to confront the possibility that Bansherwold would leave him to rot in the Crown. Tom knew he himself was far more of a wild card than Granger, far more dangerous, volatile, capable, independent. The fact that Granger was _gone _meant … well, it could mean many things, each possibility more unpleasant than the next.

But he had to get back. He actually had to; history had already been mapped out and he'd already arrived back to overtake the Wizarding World.

Well. For a time.

What troubled him intellectually – beyond the blinding, mouth-drying, gut-deep fear of his apparent death – was that the world seemed already to have forgotten him. Tom didn't know quite how to feel about it. He had intended to be a daily presence for the rest of time, never forgotten for a moment, even if his plan for immortality somehow failed.

And yet he'd seemed in the end to be simply an inconvenient hiccup for the Wizarding World, which itself seemed to be heading toward destruction. With every wizard locked up, with wizard breeding apparently controlled, according to that Glen woman …

Well, at least they weren't allowed to intermarry with Muggles. That was nice. Apparently Muggles had gotten something right.

Riddle couldn't help but wonder, though, about the wretched Muggle-born population. They'd know about magic, but they'd have to disguise it, suppress it. He couldn't imagine his own childhood if he'd had to do the same. If the Muggles at the orphanage had recognized his talents for what they were, had tried to beat them out of him …

He dreamed about it. It was nothing good.

These days, of course, his dreams were nothing _but_ nightmares. In them, he was a Muggle. He was a Mudblood under the power of some faceless ruler. He was a wizard strapped down by Muggle torturers. He was never himself.

Tom Riddle wondered if he was losing his mind. He kept catching glimpses of shadowy figures hovering around his peripheral vision, figures that looked oddly like his father, his grandparents, that Myrtle girl who'd been killed by the Basilisk. He would twist around to face them and they would disappear. Sometimes his eyes would slide out of focus and he could see blood or water dripping down the shimmering walls of his cell. Maybe that was it. Maybe he'd go mad in here.

Every so often, he found himself muttering words under his breath. Incantations, sometimes. Curses. Sometimes just names of students he'd known from the Hogwarts of over a century ago, but mostly it was spells.

One night he woke up in a cold sweat, screaming, "EXPECTO PATRONUM –"

But of course he was thinking of nothing at all.

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><p>Bansherwold picked up the velvety pouch and sat down on the sofa before Hermione, whose hands waited on her hips.<p>

"Have you heard of antimatter?" he said, weighing the Timeglass' pouch in his hand.

"In passing."

"It is comprised of antiparticles," he said. "Each one is essentially a subatomic particle that's the opposite of any given particle. Opposite charge, opposite spin. Elementally, hydrogen has antihydrogen, helium has antihelium, et cetera. They discovered in 2018 that antimatter also operates under antigravity." He eyed her firmly uncomprehending expression. "Falls upward."

"So?"

"Well, that bit isn't actually relevant. It's just fun."

She glared at him.

"Anyway, the question for a long time was why all the matter in the known world is made of matter as opposed to antimatter. _Why _do particles have this particular type of quantum spin, as opposed to the opposite type? What was the reason? Why was it not half and half, maybe, or mostly antimatter with a tiny bit of matter instead?

"Then there's the mystery of dark matter," Bansherwold continued. "From an earthly standpoint, it's invisible, seemingly intangible, and yet it comprises twenty-seven percent of the known universe, and dark energy takes up another sixty-eight."

"What are they?"

"You may want to sit down."

She did.

"Dark energy," Bansherwold said, "is energy created in instantaneous, massive bursts by miniscule openings in the fabric of space."

"_What_?"

"Just listen," he said. Her mouth snapped shut, and he continued slowly. "The energy washing through those pinprick openings is something of a friction between one universe and another. The openings are, again, largely instantaneous – they vanish as soon as they're created, and the friction dies, like a spark. It's all highly transitory."

He folded his hands. "Dark matter, on the other hand, can be one of two things. The first is a specific type of mass that builds up between universes. Think of a stone caught between two pieces of paper. You can detect the stone because it causes a bulge in the paper, but it can't be seen. The universe is riddled with the stuff; it's a byproduct, a buildup of dark energy's frictional forces if they don't disperse instantaneously enough. Essentially, as the opening in the fabric closes again, this matter doesn't get trapped in one universe or another; instead, it hangs between the two like scar tissue, thus invisible to both. That's one type."

Bansherwold glanced at Hermione, presumably to make sure she was still with him. He needn't have bothered. She was stunned, wide-eyed, and fully attentive. "The other type is simpler," he said. "It's an opening in space that _isn't_ instantaneous. These openings have a duration of maybe several seconds at most. The "matter" in that case is the doorway itself, and the gravitational effect that all the mass in the universe beyond the opening has. And this "matter," naturally, is destroyed when that opening eventually shuts."

Hermione's mouth was slightly open. All she could manage was, "Other universes?" in a voice so faint she could hardly feel the words form.

"Yes. Now," Bansherwold said, levitating the Timeglass from its bag with his wand. "This little object. That point of light in the center – what do you suppose it is?"

Hermione rifled through the mental stack of information she'd just been handed. "I … I suppose antimatter of some sort?" she said numbly.

"The opposite of dark matter, to be specific. And what do you suppose the opposite of dark matter can do, if dark matter is the result of a closed door in space?"

"Open the door again?"

Bansherwold's grin grew wider.

Hermione's world flipped several times and did a tap dance for good measure. She realized she wasn't breathing. She forced herself to do so. "What does this have to do with time?" she squeaked, and cleared her throat.

"Well, time is something we've created. It's really just an ongoing process of expansion, and we humans are caught in it quite incidentally. To magically move back and forth within it? Not really that impressive, when the proper sort of spellwork gets involved – you are shifting along a somewhat wobbly thread like a bead. Which is why magic like Time-Turning was discovered relatively early. It doesn't require anything … well, anything universe-shifting. Time-Turners are delicate objects, I'm sure you know; they have all sorts of finicky charms and such. Meant to keep the thread stable as you slide back along it. The Timeglass, on the other hand, uses blunt force to pop your bead off the thread entirely. Touch the Timeglass, and you are hit with a blast of energy sufficient to dissociate yourself from the process of universal expansion. Fun, isn't it?"

He looped his wand around, and the Timeglass landed on the sofa cushion next to Hermione. She flinched away as if it were an Acromantula.

Bansherwold said, "The Timeglass is unique in that when it is properly used, it opens a door in the world itself. You pop through that door and find yourself in another universe entirely."

"Another …" Hermione found her mouth suddenly dry. "Is that where we are now?"

"Yes. Don't bother looking outside; nothing will seem ostensibly different. Universes, Hermione, are twisted up somewhat like a colossal braid with infinite locks of hair. Picture each of those infinite locks having infinite hairs, universes that are exceedingly similar to each other. For instance, our specific lock consists of universes practically identical to ours, but with infinitesimal changes. In one of these threads, you were probably never born. In another, perhaps there was a star millions of light-years from Earth that experienced a solar flare at a time that it did not in your universe."

"But … but what are the _odds _that universes like this exist?"

"Exactly the same as the odds that there will be a universe as different from yours as you could ever imagine. But since they all do exist, odds are irrelevant. Every universe conceivable has already been conceived – and realized. The possibilities are infinite, which is why the megaverse's expansion is infinite."

"And this particular universe, the one we're in …?"

"Virtually identical to ours, packed tightly into the same lock. Here, we are still 2,057 years after the birth of a rather important man named Jesus Christ, or at least, a version of him. Here, a version of you has probably visited an older version of yourself and witnessed your own murder at my hands. Well, it wouldn't actually have been me, here. A version of me, rather. I'm quite remarkable, yes, but I don't have the time to hop around to every imaginable universe killing you all day. Sorry." His eyes twinkled merrily. Hermione wanted to hit him.

"I would've been surprised," he went on, "if you'd brought yourself anywhere significantly different, as you've never used the thing properly before. To move to a different lock, to jump all the way to a universe with sizable differences – or even slightly less miniscule differences, like if humans had perhaps never evolved – would take time, practice, and a lot of control. Although this does show progress, as you had to have made _some_ sort of effort to do anything except blast yourself forward in time again."

"Why only forward?"

"Going with the expansion's current. Moving backward requires concerted effort, much as swimming against a current would."

"And how will we get back to our proper world?"

"With ease."

"Why?"

"Because I know how to use my own invention," he scoffed.

Hermione swallowed, her mind filled with a roar of white noise. _It's not real,_ her brain told her, refusing to make the leap. _He's making it up._She couldn't reconcile the concrete world around her with the concepts he was suggesting.

"Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

"I just ... I need a moment."

"Take your time." He looked down at his folded hands and waited.

A few minutes passed in furrowed brows and closed eyes. Hermione's thoughts raced and tangled, chased each other, and eventually started to catch up with themselves. _Other universes. Infinite versions of myself in all potential situations. Infinite versions of _everyone_. All right._

She shook her head, as if to dislodge her voice, knock it back into place. "Erm," she said, "so how in God's name did you invent this in the 1800s? Was dark matter even discovered in the 1800s?"

"I told you. It was thrust upon me."

She took in a sharp breath. "… a version of you? Another version of you? Visited you and gave it to you?"

"Exactly." He twirled his wand idly. "You know, I'll tell you, finding you in this universe was a bit of a pain in the arse. Had to use an extension of Jackson's New Apotheosis Theorem to figure out which doorway you'd created."

"You can track someone's passages through universes like you track Apparition?"

"Of course. Apparition is the most similar comparison your current Wizarding World has to the Timeglass, actually. When you Apparate, you're burrowing through your particular thread, through its particular microscopic fibers. But no wizard could ever have enough natural energy to jump from thread to thread. Thus, my Timeglass, created as a helping hand." He looked fondly at it.

Hermione was certainly glad she was already sitting down. She looked down at her feet and found herself wondering about her physical composition, the odds of it, how there could conceivably be an entire universe built around her missing a toe or being an inch taller or having lost a tooth a day earlier or _any number _of possibilities.

The word "infinite" was terrifying her more by the moment.

"We should probably go back and rescue your friend now," Bansherwold said, glancing to the odd contraption on the wall. Hermione opened her mouth to ask what that was, but hell, she didn't think she could digest any more new information at the moment. She certainly wasn't digesting the Timeglass information as efficiently as she'd hoped she might.

Instead, what fell out was, "He's not my friend. The opposite, in fact."

"Really?"

"I thought you knew everything," she mumbled. "No, he's something of a nemesis. I've spent the last year trying to kill bits of him." She glanced up at Bansherwold. He wasn't looking at her. "You _did_ know that already. Didn't you."

"Yes. I preferred to hear it from your mouth, though."

"And should I even bother asking how you already knew?"

"I know everything about you," he said, giving her a curious look somewhere between a wistful smile and pained recollection.

"And yet …?" Hermione said.

"And yet what?"

"I got the feeling there was an unspoken 'and yet' at the end of that sentence."

He laughed aloud, the jumbled expression clearing, and pushed his fair hair out of his eyes. "Yes. I know everything about you, and yet you never cease to surprise me, in a way, Hermione."

She tilted her head, examined him closely in something of an attempt to understand what she was seeing. "Alen," she said carefully, testing the word, "are you really a Dark wizard?"

"In many senses. Are you asking if I am an evil person?"

"Yes."

"I'm afraid –"

"Don't you dare tell me I'll just have to wait and see."

"I wasn't going to," he said with a wry smile. "I supposed that would endanger my safety. No, I was going to tell you I'm afraid I don't know, and I'm not really sure I will ever know. I have a lot of plans, you see. I have a lot of ideas and a lot of things that I want." After a long moment of seeming consideration, he said offhandedly, "But I also have some things to come to terms with, I suppose."

A pause. Hermione shifted, looking over at the Timeglass on the sofa again. She stared at its bright spot, captured like a bug in amber, frozen in what she was now utterly sure was not glass at all.

"I'm not lying about any of this, by the way," he said. "I lie a lot, but this is not one of those multifarious instances."

"Thanks," Hermione said, "but if you're as good at lying as that seems to imply, it's not like I'd know if you were lying to me now about not lying."

He chuckled. "True."

"When are you from, exactly, by the way?"

"1878."

"So you're nineteen?"

"No, no. I've spent a while in transit. Some years, not sure how many. And I'm sure it'll be many more before I return."

"So you do return to your proper time?"

"Yes. I need to be back in 1878 ten minutes after I left, and I need to stay on the thread until 1945, which, as you know, is when I die."

"Disappear," she corrected.

"Well. You've met him, you've seen where he goes when he disappears. And Alengurd Bansherwold doesn't come back to 1945. What do you _think_ happens to him out here in the future?" At his own words, a flutter of unease crossed Bansherwold's features, which seemed odd to Hermione. He didn't seem like the type to be particularly bothered by the idea of death. Not after all that talk.

"So," he said, flicking his wand at the Timeglass. It flipped up into his lap. "Shall we go retrieve your fr – your enemy, then?"

"Doesn't really matter _when_ we go, does it? You have a time in mind for when we're going to reappear."

"True. We could stay here. You look tired; you could rest." He sighed. "It will hurt, going back. Bringing someone along, it always hurts. When you use it correctly by yourself …"

"A warm sort of feeling," she murmured.

"That's right."

Hermione shook her head. She didn't particularly want to stay in some parallel strand-universe for any longer than necessary. "No, let's go. But before we do, would you just tell me why it's me? Will you tell me why I can't go home?"

"You have a long way to go before then," he said, his eyes serious. "There's a lot for you to learn."

She half-smiled.

He smiled back. "Thought that might make you happy. Come on." He stood, levitating the Timeglass before himself. He reached out a hand, and she placed hers in it, an odd sort of tingle lighting in her fingertips.

His hand tightened, and he lifted her hand to his lips.

Hermione's mouth went dry again. _What._

Then he tucked away his wand, took the Timeglass from the air, and with a high-pitched whine they split open the very fabric of the universe and squeezed through.

It didn't lessen the agony for Hermione to conceptualize it properly.

* * *

><p><strong>"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." <strong>

**- William Faulkner**

* * *

><p><strong>Sciencey note for anyone interested:<strong>

**I did a lot of roaming the NASA website (and space dot com articles and stuff) so I could fuse bits and pieces of actual science with Bansherwold's totally made-up "braid theory." (it was originally just going to be timelines in the braid, but then I was like … eh, go big or go home, let's make it a zillion universes instead, woo.)**

**As for what's real and what's not: all of the antimatter stuff is legit, albeit simplified because I didn't want to load up heavily on terminology. (the antigravity in 2018 thing is kind of a snide nod to a recent inconclusive test regarding antigravity and antimatter, I can't paste the link in but you can google-search it pretty easily if you're interested. I believe there's a CNN article.)**

**Most everything I said defining dark energy and dark matter, on the other hand – the scar tissue and the friction and stuff – is absolutely fictional, my own little magical-y interpretations. (save the percentages, 5 percent being baryonic matter, 68 being dark energy, 27 being dark matter; those are stats from NASA)**

**Though I mean fuck it, it *could* be true. We have no friggin' idea what dark energy and matter are thus far. It all **_**could**_** be the vestiges & byproducts of pinpricks in the fabric of space-time leading to infinite alternate nearly-identical worlds twisted together like locks in a braid. Shrug.**

**So … yeah! Hope you liked it, and as always please do drop me a note if you did.**

**-speech**


	9. 2065, pt 2

**yo this chapter is a monster. hope you like it.**

**Onward and upward! Thanks to all those who reviewed:**

**Lost O'Fallon Girl, GinnyRules, Nongarak, AvoidedIsland, angrypixels, freebird4, maou-chibi-sama, ShimmeringWater, mh21, Ella Palladino, belle s2, Smithback, Will of the Fire, Poppyxxxx, Nytefyre, DevineInk, justy13, and Beserked2. Y'all are champions. And I am relieved that you liked sciencetimes. :D**

* * *

><p><strong>"Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends."<strong>

**– William Shakespeare**

* * *

><p>Tom Riddle had grown a beard, and he hated it. Sometimes he did not recognize himself when he caught a glance of his own face in the glass walls. He seethed every time he glimpsed his emaciated self. This was not who he was supposed to be, and worst was that no one <em>knew <em>what he was supposed to look like, let alone how he was supposed to act. The others didn't know about his intelligence, his power, his talent.

In fact, Geoff and Glen had long since given up on trying to verbally engage him, mostly for their own emotional safety. At some point, probably a little less than a fortnight ago, he had insulted Geoff so viciously that the boy had broken down in tears. It had been hilarious.

His hair was back to its normal length and then some. He no longer knew how much time it had been since he'd been chucked in here. However, he didn't think it did him justice to say that he'd lost track of the days; rather, he'd started willfully ignoring the number of sunsets and sunrises after a while, an attempt to suppress his displeasure. This attempt was doomed to fail, of course, but no one could say he hadn't tried.

Of course, no one could say anything, really. Or they might as well not, because he couldn't suffer to listen. Merlin, but he hoped Glen died, that fucking snarky half-blood. He hoped Geoff died faster. Worthless boy. That girl with the short hair might as well be dead already, she was so much of a soulless shell. And he thought that fellow in the corner with the red hair might _actually _be dead. Riddle hadn't seen him move in a few days, seemed like.

One time, he had even wished himself dead. He had forced himself to go to sleep immediately, fearful that he might be getting seriously unhinged.

* * *

><p>Tom Riddle was angry. To be fair, he couldn't recall a day in several weeks when he hadn't been in a constant rage. It was simply more noticeable this day because the crashes of thunder from outside perfectly reflected his foul mood.<p>

More thunder, the cracked knuckles of the gods, the air heavy and electric.

The roof retracted for what was supposed to be their late afternoon hour of sunlight. As if. It rained more often than it shone, which was actually rather fortunate, since there was no other option for showering. Today, though, was no simple shower. The thunderheads squatted above, tremendous dark volcanoes, spattering lightning around like lava. The raindrops were great slobbering tongues. The thunder's terrific din trundled overhead, flattening the charged air like dough beneath a rolling pin. For the first time in a while, Riddle could venture to say that he felt somewhat alive.

He settled further down on the wall. And then something remarkable happened.

A blast of lightning rocketed down into his cell and struck the woven floor. A crackling noise spurted up from the point of impact, and the fibers of the ground flickered and seemed to go dead.

He sat up straight, blinking rapidly. His breath caught in his throat. Something felt different about the air. Some insulation had been ripped away from his cell.

Riddle's heart raced.

Months and months of pent-up magic rushed to his fingertips like water. He could feel it.

He let out a laugh and looked up at the open roof, so far above. Utter disbelief warred with an instant sense of triumph. After all that waiting, it wasn't Bansherwold or Granger who would get him out. It would be himself. It would be his fate, his fortune, his goddamn good dumb _luck._

He whispered a quiet incantation to his fists, and when they lit up with a dark red glow, something lurched in his chest. Some deep emotion had been dislodged. He felt like opening his mouth and letting loose a fierce victorious cry, celebrating to the sky.

He was going to murder every last Muggle here.

He thrust his fists downward, and shoved off from the detestable fiber ground. He didn't quite know how he did it, but he rocketed out of his glass cell and into the sky.

For a heart-stopping second, he fell through the air – but then that feeling ground back into life in his chest: dauntless, wild, furious power. _Joy, _although he would have died before calling it that_. _And that power buoyed him, and he started to fly.

He rocketed up on drafts. Violent streams of air buffeted his hair, threaded darts of water through his beard, and if he were going to be quite honest, he thought a good old-fashioned cackle was in order.

Tom felt vindicated. Validated. Absolutely invincible.

That was when he woke up.

It was dark, and it was quiet, and he was curled in the corner of a dry cell.

He could still feel in his stomach the swoop of flight. He could still feel the power bursting from his skin …

It was unfair. It was so unfair.

For one absurd, humiliating moment, an actual tear dared to come to his eye, a vicious livid tear of sheer injustice. He bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood, his face contorting into a hideous expression of rage. He curled up so tightly he thought his pointed knees might bite into his spine. He could not think of returning to sleep; he could not think of anything but being wrathful and bitter and alone; he could not think in any way that was acceptable to him. He wanted to die. _He wanted to die._

"No," he muttered to himself, through gritted teeth. "_No_."

How many months had he been here?

How much time wasted?

Would he rot here, at the hands of those clearly inferior to him?

_If they would be his undoing, how inferior could they be?_

He closed his eyes and swallowed the bloody taste. He did not know how he had avoided the questions so long.

He supposed he really should have known it was a dream. He had never been _lucky_. He had worked every second of every day of his life to be who he was.

Though how much did it matter, now?

* * *

><p>Another band of days shuffled by, manacled together with iron nights.<p>

Tom Riddle was going crazy. He knew it. The psychotic break tickled and itched and shuddered for release like an impending sneeze. Inevitable. He wasn't sure if the other people in their cells were real anymore; they seemed to drift silent as wraiths. He slept infrequently and fitfully, so irregularly that he wasn't often sure what was a dream and what was not. He hadn't eaten in days. At least he knew that for certain. His lack of appetite was an anchor of sorts. A remarkably shitty anchor.

Lying on his back, limbs sprawled akimbo, Tom Riddle stared at the sky intently as if it might reveal something more than unrelenting cloud. He watched those clouds skitter overhead and drip their foul waters onto his face. He did not flinch, even when the water hit his eyes. He found himself wondering: did that make sense? Wasn't it an instinctive bodily reaction to blink at something like that? Was he dead, then?

I can't be dead, no; I have Horcruxes, of course I'm not dead, I've done so much work to prevent just that, he thinks, and yes, by God, hasn't he done the work. Certainly. He massages the pale band of skin on his finger where the ring was. He thinks of the matron of the orphanage finding it where he stored it just for that day a century and a half ago, behind the frame of a drawer, because he thought Alengurd Bansherwold might try to barter for it and thereby pose a threat. A threat – Riddle does not face threats; Tom Riddle's last threat was in his infancy; Tom Riddle has not been helpless since he could wave his fingers and make brittle stinging sparks like nettles, drag those sparks through the air, smack skin with them and turn it mottled red … Tom Riddle will never again be helpless; Tom Riddle will never be threatened; Tom Riddle has a name that is not his name _I am your Lord _and it guards from evil because it is the one true evil that will bring him glory – all the glory of a bursting sun – the glory of a hundred million knees bent his way – the incandescent perpetual glory of a great reign and finally at long last with a titanic _crash_ the great rain shatters down upon his lips and tongue and tiny tarnished tongues of flame dart through his mind rewinding finding pathways through his neurons his nerves into his bones his body his starved supine body his perpetually dying body and now he sees corpses lined up like matchsticks red-tipped red-tongued ready to burst into the glory of flame and there he sees Myrtle's corpse and for a minor eternity he will never be able to see anything else because her eyes are needles daggers serpents settling to crown him like a diadem of guilt and the rage writhes heavy atop it in justification and dyes the diadem deep dark black twisted withered obsidian and soon although not soon enough he forgets that the word "guilt" exists for it has always been drowned in the glory of fame and yet he must admit his air is filthy and weighs too much and truthfully he intends never to breathe again but how long he has gone breathless he is unsure the only thing he does know is that his traitorous lungs will soon betray him just like everything has and just like everything will and for just a moment he can smell his downfall and see it and taste it and it tastes not unlike the thick wasted blood of a corpse for there is a stale and clotted viscosity to that taste as if it has sat stagnant in veins for six months possibly more how many months how many days how many hours jesus fucking christ but he thought he could manage longer than this he should be able to last longer I should be able to I am lord voldemort I am _lord voldemort I am lord_

"—VOLDEMORT I AM LORD VOLDEMORT I AM LORD VOLDEMORT"

_Four bewildered pairs of eyes._

"DO YOU KNOW MY NAME DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM" _they don't know it they don't see they don't see how are they so blind these useless blind sheep they are all sheep they are all muggles_

_all of us_

"YOU ANSWER ME WHEN I'M TALKING – YOU LISTEN WHEN I SPEAK – I AM TO BE FEARED – THE WORLD WILL KNOW MY NAME THE WORLD WILL FEAR MY NAME DO YOU HEAR ME DO YOU HEAR ME DO – YOU – HEAR – ME –"

_they do not hear me_

_a maggot is wriggling out of her eye_

_his mouth is opening too far, so far, so far his jaw is drooping down to his stomach the bones are cracking the teeth are rotten twisted stumps the tongue is crawling with pupae everything is dead everything is decay; fuck staggerback stumbleback backbackback against the glass_

something is erupting in the sky for a moment he believes it is a dragon's tongue

_it is a white chase of lightning i see that i see it now_

_i am sobbing heaving screaming_

"I AM THE GREATEST WIZARD WHO HAS EVER LIVED"

_and she says,_ "You poor bloke, a bit delusional, are you?"

_an animal scream pours from my lips and i fly at the glass she stumbles back _his nails will not find purchase_ i break them all ten. i punch until my metacarpals snap. i feel no pain because that is for the weak_

_so much anger the floor crackles with harnessing my power_

"Jesus, Geoff, he's really going to hurt himself, looks like."

"Bastard can do what he likes."

_the worst thing she can do is shrug and turn away and that is exactly what she does._

_i slide down and down and down and down the wall._

_i do not know where i end up._

* * *

><p><em>the bloodstains have been dry on the wall for a week when they come, drift into being before him<em>

_riddle tells them to go, and they do, dissipating like so much mist_

_the second time they come is a week after that. they slip up through the fibers of the floor like ghosts_

_riddle throws himself bodily at them because words have lost all meaning. he cannot find menace in anything but his heart and body anymore_

_they flicker away like a mirage before he hits them_

_the third time they come is the week after that. middle of the night. they come with a _bang _and emerge panting. their faces are pained. her hair is still hardly longer than shaved. he looks immaculately groomed._

_riddle sits in the corner, gaunt and silent, cheated of everything_

"Riddle?"_ Granger says quietly._

_so now they're speaking. this is a new level, he thinks. this is a new level._

"Tom Riddle,"_ she says more loudly._

_he opens his mouth and something of a stream of noise falls out. there might be a word or two somewhere in the clutter, but he is not entirely certain because well, _he wasn't quite sure how to reply to something that wasn't real, in any case. (A fragment of lucidity swam through his mind, pierced the haze. Hallucination. Not real.) Not real … _not real_

_Granger stares at him. A dumbfounded stare. He isn't quite sure how he remembers her face in such detail, to conjure it up like this. He never had any reason to memorize her face so well._

"We should probably get him out of here," _Granger mutters._

_oh, yes, he thinks, because that has worked so well the past two times. he forces himself to his feet and strides toward them, swats at them, trying to make them disappear_

His hand met flesh.

"What …" his voice said hoarsely, somewhere far in the distance. Fingers on his hand. A hand on his hand.

He could feel Granger's hand squirming under his, begging for release, but he grasped back tightly, automatically, mercilessly. "It's …" he whispered. No more words arrived. He could not relinquish this grip, just as he could not relinquish his disbelief.

He was at the bottom of a deep lake, a million pounds of pressure resting on the crown of his head. He could not surface. This felt real. This felt more real than he could dare to believe.

"It's us," Granger said somewhat gently, consternation on her features. He stared at her face unblinking.

He made a sudden, violent move. Then Bansherwold's hands were grabbing his forearms, forcing him away from Granger. "Careful," said that soft unfamiliar voice.

Riddle turned his head slowly to look at Bansherwold. They were the same height. Fires burned in the young man's strange kaleidoscopic eyes. Points of fire like those in his twisty jumpy Timeglass …

Timeglass. Riddle hadn't even thought the word in who knew how long.

"Glen," said Granger, a helpless look settling on her features as she faced the stirring witch.

"Sorry, Hermione," Bansherwold said. "We can't."

It seemed Riddle felt nothing as Bansherwold took the Timeglass from his pocket and they all folded away with a _bang_.

"Ow," Granger panted, when their feet thudded into a solid floor. Tom looked down at his feet. Their nails were hideously long, their skin so pale they seemed to glow.

"When are we?" said Granger's voice, as Tom fiddled with the ruined edges of his papery gown. The thing was fraying, flaking like dead skin. Pale scales fluttered down to land on the dusty hardwood floor.

"Still 2065, though barely," Bansherwold said. "A couple of days have passed since he escaped, which means it's been ten months or so since you left. You'll both be on the Most Wanted List for that little feat, probably."

"Wh – you left him in there for _ten months?_" Granger said.

Tom looked around numbly. They stood in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic. He'd only visited once. Now it was dark, still, and silent. Now, the bubbling fountain had been torn down. Now, all the Floo fireplaces looked long-disused.

"This way," Bansherwold said, heading down the hall. Granger followed. Tom stood, staring at the fireplaces. Empty. Ashen. Dead. Cremated …

Granger seemed to realize what was happening a minute later. She dashed back to Tom, grabbed his arm, and tugged him along.

"I think there might be something seriously wrong with him," Granger muttered to Bansherwold when they caught up. Tom turned expressionless eyes on her. He had no opinion on her words.

"Now is not a good time to make that judgment," Bansherwold said, casting Riddle nothing more than a cursory once-over. "He looks starved, sleep-deprived, possibly injured – hands, look."

Tom held up a hand for Granger's inspection. She looked surprised but pleased at the responsiveness, but upon actually inspecting the hand – which was healing badly – any pleasure faded from her expression.

"We have a Pensieve upstairs," Bansherwold continued, opening the lift.

Pensieve. An image of silvery fibers flickered through Riddle's mind. He blinked a few times and remembered the ghostly feeling of a wand in his hand. Something pulsed deep in his brain like a throbbing heartbeat.

"We? Who's _we_?" Granger demanded.

The corner of Bansherwold's mouth lifted. "Also, there are potion ingredients at our disposal."

"Who is _we_?" Riddle echoed.

Relief fell stark on Granger's face at the complete sentence.

"I can talk. I'm not _dead_," he said, and somewhat to his own surprise, something like irritation wandered through his mind. The emotion tugged other things with it, like a rolling snowball picking up weight, and he found himself blinking a few more times and eyeing Bansherwold's expression with a bit more clarity. He'd promised to kill this man, he remembered, and he pondered doing it now, with his bare broken hands.

The lift clattered to a halt at level three. _Magical accidents and catastrophes, _Tom's mind told him, and that factoid, too, brought other bits of related information fluttering down with it. The Ministry of Magic. The Minister for Magic. The Minister of 1945, a tall, broad-shouldered woman named Elbitta Ellonore. Professor Slughorn's insistence that Tom himself try for ministerhood.

It exhausted him to recall these things. In fact, he suddenly realized, he was tired to the core of his bones. How long had it been since he'd let himself sleep?

Granger drew the lift door open, and her jaw dropped with it. Riddle, too, could only stare.

He had thought this place was supposed to be filled with cubicles. But they stood in a huge, moonlit entry hall with shining pine floors. The faded brick walls – jagged and uneven, with many nooks and crannies – had red doors set into them at random, some with steps leading up to them, some arranged diagonally against the grain of the brick. Torches danced merrily in brackets by the doors. The splash of warm colors gave the place a cheerful air, along with the fact that the room was filled with witches and wizards, some of whom had camped out in corners with small pitched tents.

"What _is_ this?" Granger said.

"Merlin's Order. An international coalition against the anti-magic movement," Bansherwold said.

"Aldous!" said a businesslike voice. The three of them glanced over to a witch who made her way out of the crowd. She was reed-thin, middle-aged, her gray-streaked red hair tied loosely back in a bun.

"Lily," Bansherwold greeted. "I found them. Penny Clearwater and Fred Perkins."

Granger held out a hand. "Hello. I'm Penny," she said feebly.

Tom did the same. "Fred."

Lily shook both their hands in quick succession. "I'm Lily Potter," she said. Granger blanched. "How on earth did you pair get out of the Crown? The papers have been furious about _you_ for months." She pointed at Granger. "Don't even get me started on what the blogosphere's been calling you. Archaic old twats."

"Er," Granger said. Tom shared her sentiment. _'Blogosphere'?_ Was that even a real word?

He blinked a few times and realized nobody else was answering Lily's question. "Lightning," he supplied, the lie coming readily, if less smoothly than usual. "Hit our cell block. Temporarily disrupted its power source. She got out the first time it happened, and then it went out again a few days ago and I did the same."

Granger glanced Tom's way and added, "I've been barricaded away in a Hogsmeade cellar for ten months, not knowing where it might be safe to Apparate."

"Do you two know each other well, then?" Lily asked.

"Distant cousins," Granger said quickly, not looking at him. "We were just hiding out together, got caught together."

"Well, we're lucky to have you," Lily said. "We need every warm body we can find. This –" she gestured behind herself at the tangle of people – "is everyone from the entire continent of Europe we know of who hasn't been caught and shuttled out to a colony like cattle."

Riddle swayed a bit. One of his knees buckled, and he staggered right into Granger, who caught him with a strangled sort of yelp.

"Goodness, of course, you'll need food and a place to sleep," Lily said, eyeing him. "Aldous, would you mind? I have to talk with Pi about something. If you've got any questions about what you've missed the past few days, feel free to ask Rose. She's wandering around here somewhere."

With that, she vanished back into the crowd.

Granger helped Riddle straighten back up, her hand pressing against the small of his back.

"You all right?" she asked quietly.

He nodded once, his eyelids drooping. "Under the circumstances, permissibly all right."

Granger let out a long, audible breath. He looked down at her, and she met his eyes.

He found that the sight of them grounded him. Gave him another tiny reminder of who he was.

Also, to his mild surprise, past her ostensible reassurance, he thought he caught a glimpse of anger in her eyes. What would she have to be angry about? It wasn't she who'd been stuck in the Crown for months on end.

"This way," Bansherwold said, guiding them toward the second red door on the left, which was tucked around a corner.

Through the door was a hallway lined with more doors; these were blue. Bansherwold led them about halfway down the hall and ushered them into a door to the left.

Blessed peace, silence, stillness. A pleasantly Hogwarts-ian stone chamber. A large, plain bed that looked like the best idea in the world. Tom had never been this glad to see such simple things. The only downside was the window, which was plate glass, uncomfortably reminiscent of the place where he'd been trapped, almost unfathomably, just an hour ago.

"Something objectionable?" Bansherwold said, scrutinizing Tom's expression. "Feel free to fix it." Bansherwold reached into his robes and produced both Tom's and Granger's wands.

They gawked at him.

Bansherwold placed their respective wands into their limp, uncooperative hands. "Happy Christmas."

More gaping silence from Tom and Granger.

"It's not actually Christmas," he said. "That was a joke."

Neither of them laughed. Shockingly.

Riddle looked down at his wand. It had been blown up. And yet, this thin stick of yew, yellowy and polished and thrumming with the perfect feeling of power …

"The other was a decoy," Hermione said blankly.

"Of course," Bansherwold said, inclining his head. "The army never would have believed neither of you was carrying a wand. There'd be no way you wouldn't have been caught yet. Of course, I couldn't give you anything but a very good fake, Tom, or you'd have known right away."

Riddle sat down hard on the bed. He didn't even consciously think a particular spell as he waved his wand at the window, but the wall on either side slammed in, popping the window out of existence with a slight crunch. He felt as if he'd suddenly relearned how to speak: instinctively and fluently.

He lit the torches on the wall.

His tired eyes fell shut. He dropped off to sleep right where he sat, his fingers wound tight around his wand.

* * *

><p>Hermione didn't know what kind of insanity it was that she was legitimately concerned about the mental state of the Dark Lord Voldemort. For Christ's sake, he was already a murdering psychopath; what more was there to be done?<p>

And yet he was all she had of a former age, and she felt herself clinging to that.

She'd pulled the covers up under his chin, given his face a curious once-over. He looked utterly neutral in sleep, just as in animation. The dark beard he'd grown, she had no doubt, would be gone by noon tomorrow.

Hermione couldn't imagine what the ten months had done to him. An arrogant, prejudiced megalomaniac beaten down and incarcerated … by Muggles themselves, no less …

If it had been any other prejudiced person, she knew they would come out hating Muggles all the more for what had been done to them. For some reason, however, she was not so sure about Tom. Harry had told her something he'd once said: _there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. _The Muggle governments, then, had certainly proven their strength. Hermione felt like Riddle might feel a snatch of grudging respect for that, if he would ever let himself do so.

He looked gaunt. Half-dead. Inasmuch that she knew Tom Riddle needed to be taken down a few hundred notches, she instinctually found the sight of him so piteous that she couldn't say she felt he _deserved _this treatment. This was not justice dealt for crimes committed; this was punishment inflicted for a crime that was not a crime at all, the crime of being oneself. And Hermione knew something about that.

She'd cast a few charms on his room so nobody could disturb his rest, and then she and Alen had emerged back onto the Level Three Hall.

Alen apparently had Things Of Importance to do around here; he seemed well-known and well-liked, and had disappeared into the group of people quite quickly. She estimated there to be around a hundred and fifty total, a miserable number considering … well, considering the entire continent of Europe. It hurt to remember how many witches and wizards had flocked to the Quidditch World Cup in 1994. Thousands even from small countries like Luxembourg. And now?

Hermione shook her head. No good dwelling on it, she told herself. Just like it was no good dwelling on the fact that Harry and Ginny's _daughter_ was here, apparently spearheading the operation.

She wondered if she and Ron had ever had children, privately thanking God she'd never found that much out.

Alen had advised that she hunt around for any group of people who had food. Everything was communal here, unsurprisingly.

Hermione caught a whiff of some sort of meaty stew and headed for the smell, her mouth watering. She found five people sitting around what might have once been a fancy golden potions cauldron but was now the most unnecessarily flashy stew pot in history. One of them was Lily Potter. Someone she knew – thank goodness.

"Erm … ex – excuse me," she said.

"Penny," Lily exclaimed. "Budge up, you lot. The girl's probably famished. Here, dearie." She summoned a bowl and ladled a gratuitously large portion into it, then levitated it Hermione's way.

"Thank you," Hermione said, settling to the blanketed section of ground to eat.

"Penny, this is my husband and partner-in-crime, Pi," Lily said, nudging the slender man sitting next to her. He nudged Lily back, then lifted a hand in a friendly wave. Hermione blinked a few times. His greying hair almost looked Malfoy-blond, but … well, he was _Lily Potter's husband._

"This is Victoire Lupin and her daughter Apolline." Beside Pi sat a spindly woman around Lily's age, perhaps a little older. Her face was an austere, lined mirror image of the ethereally beautiful young woman to her left. "And this is my Chief Lieutenant, Rose Weasley," Lily finished, pointing across the circle to the woman who sat immediately to Hermione's right.

"Rosie. Please," said Rose, holding out a hand. "Only Lil calls me Rose."

Hermione shook her hand, and a lump stuck in her throat the second she met Rose Weasley's blue eyes. They were unmistakably Ron's.

_Her daughter._

No chance Rose would recognize her with her hair hacked off this way. Nevertheless, Hermione felt the alarmingly strong inclination to blurt, "I'm your mother!" Luckily, she managed to restrain herself, busying her mouth with the delicious stew.

"I've already told them all how you got out of the Crown, Penny," Lily said. "It's remarkable, frankly."

"Quite," said Pi drily. Hermione could have sworn she heard a hint of the Malfoy drawl.

"Just very lucky," Hermione mumbled.

Lily continued, "There are some things you should know, though, since you've only just arrived …"

Hermione grew more unnerved the more Lily spoke. She clearly had the same confident, brash charisma that Harry had, and the same raw offhand flair that made Ginny's personality so magnetic. Being able to link the mannerisms of this older woman back to her friends as she knew them … she felt as if she were intruding on something.

Lily ticked off on her fingers briskly. "Follow orders. You can question them as much as you want – we encourage it, actually; always better to be informed so no one makes a careless mistake – but follow them. Odds are, Rose is smarter than you, so trust her."

Hermione nearly laughed aloud.

"Don't take it personally," Lily said, misinterpreting the strangled expression on Hermione's face. "She's smarter than everyone. Moving on: we're in a bit of a crucial stage right now; you've come in at an interesting time. For six months now, we've been planning an invasion of an international meeting with the Prime Minister. There's a weak spot, you see – the Minister of Magic used to floo the Prime Minister every once in a while, in a concealed chamber near a certain well-known conference room. Naturally, the Spell-Scourers removed the Floo Network charm, but they did it _after _they cast the anti-Apparition wards. So there's a blank spot in the ward where, we can, in fact, Apparate in … but only into that fireplace. There are also wards around to detect any magic at all. As you may imagine, that's a bit inconvenient, so we'll be going in in three stages.

"The first group will Apparate there the night before, hide out in the fireplace until ten minutes before the meeting begins, and then they'll remove the Anti-Apparition wards. That group will be five people, led by Aldous Benfry, who – oh, of course, you know Aldous. He brought you here." Lily cleared her throat. "The second band will be led by me. We will all Apparate in at the beginning of the meeting, myself included, and that's hopefully when diplomatic talks will begin."

"Once their shock fades that anyone's managed to escape their ghettoization," Pi said scathingly.

Lily chuckled. "Yes, well, if the shock proves too much and that attempt fails completely, the third band will come in. That's Rose and the rest of our minor army. We're prepared to use force and take hostages if necessary."

Hermione swallowed the last of her food as Lily said, "So, there you have it. The master plan. The President of the Far Ex-American Territories will also be there, plus high-ranking officials from both their governments."

"What about all that technology they have?" Hermione said. "The suits, the robot … things …"

"The charmshock suits, right." Lily sighed. "Well, those protections cover a broad spectrum of basic spells and hexes, and most Dark signatures. But it certainly doesn't cover all spells. In essence, it makes it difficult to duel them quickly, but it's doable. It's better to focus on Transfiguration, charmed objects, things like that, rather than going directly for the strike."

"As for the robots," Rose said grimly, "I've been developing a multistrike hex that acts as a sort of EMP. Should short out their central navigation and targeting at the very least, hopefully shut them down altogether."

"The Prime Minister does have a select few wizard guards, which is so hypocritical it makes me want to throw up," Lily said. "But they won't have been doing much dueling for a long time now, so hopefully they'll be out of practice. Anyway, we don't _want_ to hurt him, of course. We just want all battle elements efficiently incapacitated."

"And this is happening when?" Hermione asked.

"The day after tomorrow."

Hermione was glad she had already swallowed her food, because she sputtered most ungracefully. "Oh. Gracious, that's soon."

Victoire spoke up. "If you'd rather not take part, by no means feel obliged." Her voice was mellow, luxuriant, and her hooded eyes were unreadable. "We have several key members of the Order remaining behind, in case of the worst. Including me."

"Conveniently," Pi said.

"Scorpius," Lily scolded him, and all trace of doubt vanished from Hermione's mind that this was a Malfoy descendant. It had to be Draco's son, she supposed.

_Scorpius … _bloody hell. He'd really out-Malfoyed himself.

Hermione suppressed an unladylike snigger, cleared her throat, and drew herself up further. "No, I'll go," she said. "I want to be a part of this."

"That's the spirit," Rose said. "Ever been to Parliament before?"

"Oh, Merlin, is _that_ where the meeting is?"

"Right you are. Palace of Westminster. Appropriately grandiose location for Merlin's Order to make its first public appearance, I thought." Lily grinned smugly. "We've mostly been working through stealth, but this … it'll be livecapped to every vidset in the Muggle world."

Hermione bit her tongue. She didn't know what that meant, but she couldn't ask without seeming suspicious. Did they just mean televised?

"And for those who aren't wearing their vidsets at the time, we'll get a postcap up on the internet within three minutes of the event," Victoire said.

Hermione privately gave up on complete comprehension. She'd just ask Alen later. "So there are Order movements across the globe?"

"Absolutely," Rose said. "My father's head of the one in North America; Uncle Harry's gone to Africa …"

Hermione's stomach lurched so violently she shifted in place. Ron and Harry were still spearheading movements. They'd be in their mid-nineties, but of course, Dumbledore had been well over a hundred during Voldemort's second rise …

Rose was listing off some other names, but Hermione could only nod vacantly, trying to appear engaged, trying not to fixate on the fact that she _wasn't _too far-gone, time-wise. She could still conceivably see Harry or Ron. This future seemed impossibly alien in a lot of ways, but she was sure if Bansherwold hadn't killed her, she would be here right alongside her daughter …

A miserable tide rose in her chest. "I'm … I'm so sorry, I'm exhausted," she said, setting down her bowl. In truth, she wasn't particularly tired, but her heart felt carved of glass and her tongue felt wrought of lead. She could not concoct any more lies. It was draining.

"I wouldn't expect anything different," Rose said. "Go, get a good night's rest, go on."

She didn't need to be told twice.

As she headed back down the corridor with the blue doors, a voice called, "Penny."

She turned. Alen was striding down the narrow hall toward her.

Her anger of earlier resurfaced, and she was suddenly glad he was here. They had to have words. "Hello," she said stiffly.

"The room next to his is empty."

She opened the door and jerked her head toward it. "Come in for a minute, please."

To her mild horror, he raised one eyebrow and said, "Well. My pleasure," before walking in. It took all her effort not to slam the door behind her.

She shut it with marked quietness and rounded on him, her lips pursed, channeling Molly Weasley as much as humanly possible. "We need to talk."

"Always an auspicious start to a conversation," he said, looking irritatingly unconcerned.

She didn't wait for him to finish his comment before barreling forward. "What you've done to Riddle is _absolutely unacceptable_."

For the first time since she'd met him, he looked legitimately surprised. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"I can't believe you would leave him in there for almost a year!" she snapped. "Do you have any idea what that place is like in any way but theory? I was starting to lose it a little and I'd only been in there two and a half weeks! I doubt you bothered to do your research, but one of the people in our cellblock did nothing but blather to himself all day, another had completely suppressed half her memories, another was having paranoid delusions, and the last was catatonic. Maybe Riddle didn't come out barking mad, but if he were I wouldn't be at all bloody surprised. It's not like he's exactly normal in the first place. He's a murderer, for God's sake; he's unbalanced enough without being left to stew in isolation a century ahead of where he should be! And that's another thing – he has to arrive back in 1945 the same age as he left; there's _nothing _in the history books about Tom Riddle time-traveling, so it's paramount that nobody knows, and if he's visibly altered when he gets back –"

"Hermione –"

"– no, shut up! Most importantly, did you ever think that by putting his sanity at risk you're putting both of us at risk? Sorry, but I don't want to be around a man who's spent one-eighteenth of his life probably plotting my detailed demise, thank you very much!"

She drew a long, halting breath, her fists quivering. "There. That's it. Now you can try to bloody well explain your reasons. Thanks."

As was so often with any outburst at all, Hermione instantly regretted it. She'd worked herself into an embarrassing frenzy. The silence rang about her, turning her cheeks pink.

The longer he stared, the more she regretted exploding. Merlin … why couldn't she have just remained aloof? Why had she done this, stuck up for _Voldemort, _of all people? Exhaling slowly, she ran her hands through the short brown curls starting to grow into place on her scalp.

Then Alen shook his head. "I have no reasoning."

Whatever she'd expected, it had not been that. Hermione froze with her hand on her head and stared at him. "… excuse me?"

"I have no reasoning, except for the fact that he is Lord Voldemort, and he deserves it."

Shock froze Hermione for an instant. When she came back to herself, she gripped her wand so tightly she thought it might snap.

_Don't say anything, _she told herself. _He has reasons. He must have them. He might be trying to provoke you …_

It didn't work. Mindless, purposeless torture? How could she not protest that? "He _deserves _it? You're one to talk!" she burst out. "I've read all about you – you're not exactly a savory character. You, one of Grindelwald's chief lieutenants –"

He took a step forward, his eyes darkening. "I was never in league with Grindelwald. Never. He invented that to distract me so he could – so I'd lose –"

He bit the word off.

Hermione waited.

"Lose what?" she demanded, after a second.

His lips stayed stubbornly shut. His eyes burned into hers.

"You owe me answers," she said, jabbing a finger in his direction, wishing it were her wand instead. "You owe me."

He took another step toward her, and she had to tilt her head up to maintain eye contact. Another step, and sudden awareness of him struck her. Broad shoulders. Height. Sleeves rolled up past corded forearms. His anger was a thick mask, making his balanced features nearly unrecognizable.

For one insane second, she thought he might kiss her.

Then he said, in a voice so quiet that the hair on the back of her neck rose, "Don't talk about what you don't understand."

It hit harder than a smack.

"Get out," she replied just as quietly, her voice shaking with rage.

One corner of his mouth drew up the tiniest bit, completely at odds with the fury in his gaze.

Then he said, "Anything for you," his voice low and seething and strangled and honest, and he was gone.

* * *

><p>Tom Riddle woke up to Hermione locking his bedroom door.<p>

He sat bolt upright, wand instantly at the ready. _Merlin, _it felt good to have it back in his hand. "What are you –"

To his affront, she hushed him violently. With a few flicks of the wrist and muttered incantations, she cast several silencing charms over the room. "It's four in the afternoon," she said. "Slept enough?"

He rubbed his eyes.

"Also, are you feeling vaguely human again?" She held up her wandless hand, which he realized was holding a stack of clothes, with half a loaf of bread placed on top.

He stuck out his hand, and she placed the bundle into it. "Eat slowly," she advised. "Your body's not used to it anymore."

"I know," he said, which was true on an intellectual level, but once he started eating, he could not stop. He bolted it down in a mindless haze, threw his bedcovers off himself, stood, and started pulling the trousers on.

"We'll be out of here tonight," Hermione said, turning away, presumably to preserve his nonexistent modesty.

"Why?"

"Movement to combat the Muggle government. Assuming you're up to it."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"Don't kill anyone, by the way; you're not allowed," she said, which he thought was a bit of a heavy qualification.

"Why not?" he said, standing up and buttoning his trousers.

She turned back around and gave him a level glare. "Because first of all, it's an attempt at diplomacy, and because secondly, you shouldn't kill people, for Christ's sake."

He snorted, suddenly filled with restless energy. The entirety of his tremendous mind seemed to have trickled back into his skull over the night, and now he felt practically manic with the need to prove himself to be himself.

"Merlin, you're skinny," she said, frowning in the general direction of his torso. He looked down at himself. 'Skinny' was a generous understatement; he looked positively skeletal. Granger could probably count his ribs from across the room.

"What's the plan?" he said sharply, pulling on his shirt.

She sighed. "More following Bansherwold's orders, unfortunately. He's managed to persuade Lily that we should be in his cohort for the first stage of operations. It'll be us three and two others."

Tom grimaced. "At least we have our wands back."

"Yes. Thank God."

"Why would he start this war if he's going to fight to end it?" Tom muttered.

"That's what I've been wondering. By all accounts, it doesn't make a drop of sense." Granger's brow was furrowed, the frustration he felt scored into her forehead in trenches.

As they stood across from each other, Tom sensed that something had changed. He did not feel inclined to argue with her; nor did he sense that she was inclined to argue with him. He did not want to belittle her or provoke her or even order her around. After all, they had made it this far with her obnoxious insistence on somewhat equal footing, and had proven herself useful on multiple occasions – the Cloak, the directions around the Vatican, even the cryptic suggestions from her older self. Meanwhile, the world around him had turned grim and wild and hostile. This world had gotten him knocked out, shot, incarcerated, and driven him mad. Yet here _she_ stood, this infuriating girl, still determined, still capable, still resolutely there.

She seemed to have become his constant. He had something, and it was her.

It reassured him.

Unsettled, he took his wand from the bed. "Food," he said. "Is there more?"

"Loads. Come on."

"Wait."

"Yes?" she said.

"Where did the Timeglass take you when you left?" he said.

"An alternate universe," she said.

And then, with five minutes' worth of quiet explanation, his entire world came apart.

* * *

><p>Riddle was still reeling when the Order ate dinner together. He was still reeling throughout Lily Potter's oversentimental motivational speech when they split up into their three groups. Frankly, he was still reeling when they twisted on their heels five in a row and landed in the fireplace in the Palace of Westminster.<p>

He felt like the entire world was not real.

He'd insisted it was a lie, of course, but Granger's face had held utmost conviction. And why, really, would she lie about that?

But, well … _fuck._

The idea of infinite versions of himself … he instantly wanted to murder them all. There could only ever be one of him. He felt insulted by his doubles' potential existence.

In the dim dawn, the small room off the Lords Chamber was murky with half-light. The fireplace was unnecessarily large, but for five people, it still felt a tight fit. Granger was wedged against his left side. A man named Cristick, one of those obnoxious intended-hero types, shifted excitedly against his right.

They'd cast spells all night to prepare to break the wards. It was advanced magic, and this wasn't exactly an optimum location, but it would have to do. Besides, with Tom Riddle, Alengurd Bansherwold, and Hermione Granger working together, they probably could have been suspended upside-down in a piranha-filled tank of water and still gotten the job done.

"Five minutes until we break the wards," Bansherwold murmured. As soon as the wards were broken, Lily's band would arrive immediately, and the magic-detection wards would go off, blowing their cover. They would stream into the Lords Chamber and demand audience with the Prime Minister.

That was the plan, anyway, although Riddle's focus was split entirely in two.

"Stop thinking about it," Granger muttered to Riddle.

"Not all of us can just turn off our thoughts," he muttered back, the statement not coming out nearly malicious-sounding enough for his tastes. He couldn't help it, though: she was the only other person who knew the truth the Timeglass revealed, the only other who understood how hard this shook the foundations of his known world. In fact, she was the only other person who _could_ ever know. What would happen if this information ever leaked? Chaos.

"I know it's impossible to process," she whispered. "I'm serious, just try to put it out of your mind. It'll come in bits."

He didn't reply.

"Ten seconds," Bansherwold said, before Riddle knew it.

He drew his wand, raised it, and as Bansherwold snapped his fingers, five voices muttered incantations, sending counterward completion spells into the air.

A noise erupted like a burst cauldron. That was not supposed to happen – it was supposed to be soundless.

And nothing happened. No allies appeared.

Lina, the woman beside Cristick, swore colorfully.

Riddle glared down the line, wondering which one of them was the incompetent fuck-up who'd done it wrongly. It certainly hadn't been him.

That blasting noise would have alerted the guards for sure. The second group wasn't coming. The wards were still up. What were they to do?

"We'll just have to do it ourselves," hissed Cristick. "Come on!"

"Storm that Chamber with five people? Are you mad?" Tom spat.

But Cristick was already out of the fireplace, and a blaring alarm was already ripping through the room.

"It might be our only chance," said Lina, and followed Cristick out into the open. "Come on, you three!"

Tom found himself exchanging one look with Granger. Determination and hesitation warred on her expression.

After a long second, she said, with steel resolve, "We can fight them," and drew her wand.

He nodded once. In all honesty, it would be the finest of pleasures to fight the anti-wizard filth awaiting them. Almost enough to justify the slight risk of harm to his person.

They hoisted themselves out of the fireplace and ran with the others toward the door to the Lords Chamber. Bansherwold came behind them.

They opened the door to the Chamber and burst through, wands at the ready, surrounded by magnificent carved wooden walls, dramatic oil paintings arching at the head of the room. The ceiling soared overhead.

Tom and Hermione both froze, staring at the Prime Minister. He sat in the practically thronelike chair at the head of the chamber. He wore a dark Muggle suit. He was also horribly and instantly familiar.

He had apparently had a set of false teeth made, but it was unmistakably the elder Gurdy Bansherwold.

"_What_?" Tom said. The word rang through the room.

Tom didn't recognize the other statesmen surrounding Gurdy, all of whom were in complete uproar. Gurdy himself was arguing ferociously with one of them.

Tom twisted around to look at the younger Bansherwold. His expression was unreadable.

Guards started pouring through the entrance to the chamber.

Cristick and Lina charged forward, transforming chairs into animated creatures that flung themselves at the guards like ravenous wolves. Granger forged ahead, too, casting a cutting charm at the propaganda-laden drapery hanging overhead, which flopped down onto the guards, disorienting them.

Using their charge as a distraction, Riddle crept to the side of the chamber. Keeping his back to the wall and his body crouched behind the backs of the fancy seats, he maneuvered his way toward the clot of statesmen.

When finally he burst into sight, he stood ten feet from the nearest Muggle, who wore a red, white, and blue flag pin on his lapel. The Muggle let out a yell and stumbled back from him.

Riddle didn't care. His target was someone else.

He twisted his wand toward the elder Bansherwold and yelled, "_Kreppel ilaz!_"

Bansherwold's own spell. A potent, crippling Dark curse, derived from Germanic roots. There would be no way a typical Muggle protective device could be charmed to block the likes of that.

"Look out!" cried one of the statesmen, knocking Gurdy's shoulder. He twisted, and the light of recognition entered his eyes as the crackling stream of crimson light roared his way.

Then a wand was in Gurdy's old, wrinkled hand, and he roared the countercurse. Riddle's curse died in midair, turning to ash, which dropped in a fine powdery line to the polished floor.

The whole room had gone absolutely still. The alarm blared on, but no one seemed to care anymore. All the guards were staring at the wand held in Gurdy's hand.

Gurdy's eyes raised very slowly to the metal device near the back of the room. It was blinking red. Riddle didn't know what that meant, but he supposed it was something significant, in some Muggle way.

Somewhere close behind Riddle, the younger Bansherwold muttered something. Riddle glanced back at him, recognizing the incantation.

Bansherwold grinned and flicked his wand. Riddle could practically feel the Anti-Apparition ward breaking. Silently, as it should have been.

He'd prevented the ward from breaking in the first place. He'd sabotaged the plan …

"Seize him!" yelled a voice. One of the Muggles was pointing to Gurdy.

Gurdy looked around, holding his wand high in wizened fingers. "Try," he called over the alarm's clamor, his expression hard. "Just try it. These are _my_ troops. This is _my _country. I have led this entire accursed world out of the greatest time of instability since the second World War. Feel free to test their loyalty. Feel free to try."

Nobody tried.

Then one stateswoman said coldly, "You disgusting hypocrite."

Gurdy said, "Avada Kedavra," and the room glared green, and the woman dropped dead.

The alarm cut off, leaving a silence in its wake that could have sliced through flesh.

Then the Muggle with the flag pin said, "Allan, this goes against everything you stand for."

Gurdy whipped around and fired a nasty-looking curse at the Muggle.

Riddle strode forward and blocked it.

Then, unleashing the pent-up frustration of nearly a year without magic, he began to duel the man who had ruined the world as he knew it.

The Muggles swarmed back as the duel set in, screaming and shoving. The guards stood immobile, a swarm at the other end of the chamber. _Crack_ noises burst from the air as the second band of the Order appeared one by one, and one by one they stood frozen in shock.

Riddle's wand had never moved faster. He had never felt more like himself, standing tall with a wand in his hand, his skin scrubbed so clean that the grime of the Crown could never infect him again, his hair swept back and his face shaven. He was back. He was himself, and _everyone_ would know. Everyone would see his deeds and marvel.

He slashed his wand in an X three times, baring his teeth, striding forward. A blast of orange light swooped out and toward Gurdy, emitting an earsplitting scream. Gurdy dove out of the way and cast a flailing chain toward Tom. He Transfigured it into an enormous spider and flung it back at his opponent, who set it aflame, cast it aside, and laughed, laughed, laughed. A terrible sound.

Tom raised his wand. "AVADA –" he yelled –

But someone else had already said the words.

The green jet of light rushed toward Gurdy. He twisted toward the unexpected source, and true dread crossed his features. He made some sort of panicked attempt at a shield that emitted a blinding white light and an unbearable roar. It was over in an instant: Riddle squinted his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, and when the light faded, and when the shield cleared, Gurdy Bansherwold was sprawled dead on the floor of the House of Lords, killed at his own hand.

Tom's ears rang in the wake of the roar. He looked over at the younger Bansherwold, who lowered his wand slowly, some unidentifiable emotion on his face.

It was the strangest suicide Tom could ever imagine.

"If you would do the honors," Bansherwold said, turning to Hermione. Quiet as his words were, the whole world heard them.

Hermione levitated the Timeglass out of her pocket. Riddle wondered why she had the damn thing.

Two _crack _sounds split the air as Lily Potter and Rose Weasley Apparated into the wreckage.

Then Riddle joined Bansherwold and Granger in the center of the room, Bansherwold laid two fingers lightly on the Timeglass, and they were blasted into nothingness, leaving a silent détente behind them.

* * *

><p><strong>"The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet."<strong>

**- William Gibson**

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks for reading, and as always, please let me know if you're here with me! :)<strong>

**(i'd be particularly interested to hear if the riddle-going-crazy-as-fuck bit worked for you ... i haven't written anything like that since that one scene in tied for last. crazy fun to draft, total bitch to edit.)**

**love,  
>speech<strong>


	10. 2075

**GREETINGS ALL HUMANS. Let us forge forth once more.  
><strong>

**Thanks to reviewers: Friendly review, Inkfalls, Guest, momothelemur, DevineInk, Sekowari, Poppyxxxx, Will of the Fire, TheLightningScar, panda1222, Nytefyre, wintersalad, elle, ljoan, mh21, love-warmth-life, another Guest, uleanblue, MissMally, another Guest, The oddest thing, marana1, murtagh799, GinnyRules, Cellar, Anom, Ember Nickel, freebird4, Tanzanite Queen, aaand Lost O'Fallon Girl. Were I the Muggle dictator of a dystopian future, I would totally not throw you guys in cells and use you as energy sources. All my love.**

**Reading back over uploads of recent chapters, I keep noticing bits where FFnet keeps jamming italicized words into regular words, even though it didn't show up like that in the doc manager. The fuck, FFnet. The fuck. (I promise my space bar isn't broken.)**

**xoxo,**

**Speech**

* * *

><p><strong>"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."<strong>

**- Edgar Allen Poe  
><strong>

* * *

><p>They reappeared in the side room that housed the fireplace. Tom gasped in a breath, straightened up, and pushed his hair back from his forehead. Merlin, he wished that experience would get less unpleasant.<p>

"When's this?" Granger asked, similarly out-of-breath.

"The future," Bansherwold said, helpfully. He nodded at the door to the Lords Chamber. "Make yourselves presentable, we've got to go back in there in a moment."

"Why?" Tom said.

Bansherwold turned a cold gaze on him. Tom hardened his own gaze to match. He wasn't sure why, but Bansherwold seemed to have a new animosity toward him that hadn't been present before Tom's time in the Crown. Before, he'd felt like a pawn. Now he felt like an enemy.

He preferred it this way. Animosity, at least, meant respect.

"You'll see," Bansherwold said stiffly.

Granger let out a small noise of protest. Bansherwold glanced toward the girl, his apparent hostility softening. "Sorry," he said. "But the more you two ask unnecessary questions, the more I have to give you that answer."

Tom's eyes narrowed. Why was Granger getting a proper response? Why was Bansherwold treating them differently?

But … suddenly, he remembered their appearance in the Crown. A joint appearance.

Granger hadn't gone over to his side, had she? Tom didn't think she had the guile for that, much less the motive. She still needed to get back to her proper time.

Although she could be trying to satisfy Bansherwold's wishes as fast as possible in order to convince him to return her. It would explain why she had the Timeglass. Why Bansherwold sometimes gave her that look, an brief, intense study, his eyes glittering in a way that seemed more than appreciation …

_Hang on. _Tom's jaw clenched. Potentially, when Granger vanished, she could have been gone a long while, possibly ten months or longer. If she'd been with Bansherwold the whole time, what if she'd more than formed an alliance with him? What if she'd done something ridiculous like develop _feelings _for him?

Tom had worked himself into a murderous rage. The last thing he needed was his only ally to be a new enemy.

Bansherwold took out his wand and flicked it at the shimmering screen on the wall of the room. A picture appeared, a crystal-clear image of what was happening in the Lords Chamber.

The chamber had had a redecoration. More chairs filled up the room's central, sunken area, hiding the faded carpet entirely. A platform stood at the head of the room, now – a platform that wore a glossy banner that read, "10 YEARS' PEACE." The whole room, seats along the wall and all, was packed with bodies, silent spectators listening to the speech being made by the man at the podium.

"… seven years now, working together, the WNMC has aimed to crack down on not only Dark Magic, but anti-magic hate crimes, so that both non-magical and magical communities can live without fear. Strides have been made for betterment of both sides of the spectrum: The education of non-magic schoolchildren has been expanded to include the basics of what magic can do, the history of Wizarding society, and its impact. The education of Wizarding schoolchildren, in turn, has been expanded to include technological education, including usages of the internet, phone, television, livestreaming, and postcapping. They are also taught about the danger of anti-magic technology, which, unfortunately, pervades the black market today, despite its governmental relegation to Special Forces units exclusively.

"In other words, we're moving to combat ignorance. The discrepancy between our two cultures is, admittedly, a tremendous gulf to bridge, but we of the WNMC are working our hardest to bring our continents closer together."

The man at the podium smiled. "Today, Minister of Magic Lucy Weasley and I welcome you to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Great Détente. In this very room, my predecessor Allan Banks was revealed to be a wizard himself, therefore forcing our country – and the world – to address the true source of all the problems we'd made. It was later discovered that Banks had been using a dangerous type of Dark Magic to control the minds of members of Parliament. But when Banks tried to turn on the President of the F.E.A.T., an unknown wizard stepped up to save the President's life. This wizard, although he vanished shortly thereafter, took those first courageous steps toward showing the world what a great good magic could be, if it's in the right hands."

The man lifted his hand, and a picture of Tom Riddle's face appeared on the silvery banner, caught mid-duel, fiercely lit by the white glow of a spell. Something caught in Riddle's throat. _Courageous. A great good. _He almost was like he was back at school again, where everyone believed him a saint. It was thoroughly surreal.

"Another wizard, who also disappeared, used deadly force to stop Banks. It was then that two witches arrived on the scene. You may know them: Lily Potter and Rose Weasley." The man's smile faded. He raised a hand, and Lily and Rose's faces appeared on the fluttering banner. "Tragically, just four months after the famous London Peace Talks that ensued, Ms. Potter and Ms. Weasley were assassinated. These joint heads of Merlin's Order's European Branch were shot to death when they traveled to Cairo to attend an international peace conference. We still remember their dedication and sacrifice, and strive to fulfill the wish they had of a world with cooperation between our societies. Their deaths brought together Wizarding and non-magic communities in a collective grief that we still feel today."

Riddle noticed movement beside him. He glanced down at Hermione. She was silently crying, her shoulders shaking violently. What on earth? How could she cry over people she'd only known for a _day_? That seemed absurd, even by the standards of pathetically emotional Gryffindors.

Then Bansherwold placed an arm over her shoulders. Riddle's disbelief curdled into a mixture of disgust and outrage. He glared at Bansherwold over Hermione's head. Logically, he had no right to comfort her. If it weren't for him, the girl wouldn't even know any of this.

"We'd like to give a special thanks today to the self-named Mudblood Collective," the man at the podium said, "an organization that has stepped up with unending patience and immeasurable courage over the last several years to help negotiate the tenuous link between Non-Magic and Wizarding peoples. The heads of the M.C. – the non-magic Thea Anderson, the Muggleborn Elena Dursley, and the wizard Teddy Lupin – received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2071, making Ms. Dursley and Mr. Lupin the first Wizarding recipients of the prize."

"Come on," Bansherwold said, moving toward the door to the Chamber.

"What?" Granger said. "But – but he hasn't finished."

"Now."

Riddle gritted his teeth, but strode toward the door. He expected Bansherwold to open it slightly and for them to slip into the Lords Chamber unobtrusively, but instead, Bansherwold flung it wide before them, framing their entrance with unignorable drama.

Heads turned. A few at first, and then a stream of muttering spread, and then a thousand faces turned Riddle's way in what felt like his millionth Bansherwold-induced public appearance. Before the Timeglass, he'd made it a point to keep under the radar. That was the way to lay groundwork for future plans, after all; he had no experience with actual fame, except the word-of-mouth fame that Hogwarts had afforded him.

Now the Prime Minister faltered in his speech. His eyes widened.

Then everything was silent.

A swarm of machines wearing blinking red lights swiveled their way.

* * *

><p>Tom Riddle had a knighthood.<p>

The three of them were now Sir Tom Riddle, Dame Hermione Granger, and Sir Alengurd Bansherwold. They'd been interrogated – well, "interviewed," but frankly Riddle found the inane babbling as agonizing as the Cruciatus – by so many damn Muggles that they were all starting to look the same.

Of course, the knighthoods weren't actually under their names. They'd been written down as Sir Fred Perkins, Dame Penelope Clearwater, and Sir Aldous Benfry.

Still. It was a strange feeling, to have a national honor bestowed on him. Riddle, having grown up around Muggles, knew the legends of knights. He'd even self-indulgently nicknamed his band of followers the Knights of Walpurgis, in an ironic spin on Walpurgis Night, a pagan Muggle festival of witch congregation. But he'd never imagined doing anything good for the country that might yield knighthood. Who knew that wanting revenge on the batty old Gurdy Bansherwold would make him internationally renowned? Maybe he should engage in public dueling more often.

The three of them were staying in a flat near Diagon Alley. Most of the alley had stayed relatively intact over the decades, although here and there, signs of technological influence poked through. A glass screen with a Wizarding broadcast from Portus Network here, a dangling metal web that emitted blaring Wizard Rap there...

Riddle didn't quite know how to feel about technology. It stemmed from Muggles, so naturally, he'd assumed it was useless at first … but the sorts of technology he was seeing here seemed to elevate Muggles practically to the abilities of magic. The weapons he'd seen used were – dare he even think it – _impressive_. About the only thing Muggles had seemed to keep rudimentary were their instruments of torture. It pleased Riddle to see that Dark Magic was still vastly superior in that aspect.

What most unsettled him, indubitably, was the fact that Muggles could control a wizard with their science, using only a piece of hair or skin. It was like they were making potions without any magical ingredients. It didn't even seem like it should have been possible.

What with their flying vehicles – much safer-feeling than brooms, frankly – and their communications systems, this "internet" and their "uplinking" and their "livecasts," Riddle felt uneasy. With their bombs and guns and charmshock suits, their weaponized robots, Riddle felt unnerved.

Muggles had turned from sheep into dragons.

On top of that, Riddle could still feel a lingering, shaky, agitated afterthought of his descent into insanity. It rubbed at the back of his brain, pushing against the grain of his mind, forcing him to hold onto his sense of self tight like a man clutching to the edge of a cliff. Once, his control had slipped, and the world fractured, turning into a blare of pictures and sensations. He masked it well, of course, but the moment had horrified him, a low point in a series of stresses: he constantly felt irritable, he couldn't focus properly, and every time he was about to go to sleep, he experienced a terrible sensation of plummeting. Then he could do nothing but lie there, rigid as a carving, staring at the ceiling and reminding himself he was sane.

The reminder seemed fruitless, sometimes. Other times, it seemed patently false.

They settled in. They were visited by important people in both the Wizarding and Muggle communities. Riddle stayed mostly silent. They faked normalcy.

Four days after they arrived, Riddle sat in the flat's kitchen, eating breakfast cautiously. Caution was necessary: his body was still unused to regular food, and every so often, in the middle of meals, his stomach lurched, and he felt as if he might regurgitate it all. Bansherwold seemed to find this very funny. Granger, less so.

In fact, the girl seemed to be going about helping his recovery somewhat, in ways that were astoundingly unobtrusive. He hadn't thought she had it in her to be anything _but_ obtrusive, frankly. Beside his bed, though, he'd found clothes that had been taken in to fit his stick-skinny frame and a convenient cup of Dreamless Draught, and … well, it had to be her.

He hadn't made any sort of gesture of gratitude. She didn't seem to expect one.

He almost enjoyed it. After all, he missed being waited on hand and foot by the small band of Slytherins who were so terrified of him at school. Granger's actions were a meager replacement, but they sufficed.

It felt strange, though. She wasn't doing it out of fear. She wasn't doing it to flatter him, to impress him, or to try and get in his good graces. The fact that her helping him seemed to be entirely independent of anything actually involving him took Riddle aback a bit every time he thought about it. It was like she was doing it for herself. Either that, or she had some sort of vested interest in his physical restoration, although he'd tried thinking of a motive and had come up empty-handed.

Maybe she was just doing it to feel good about herself. That seemed to be how altruism worked.

Riddle took another bite of the bland porridge – a safe food for the most part – and turned the page in the _Daily Prophet_. He found himself in the midst of wedding announcements, and was about to flip through when something caught his eye: one Ariadne Goyle was marrying a man named Petey Stebbins. A _Mudblood_.

Riddle was still staring at the page, riveted in horror, when Bansherwold walked into the room.

"Something wrong?" he said airily, eyeing Riddle's expression of total revulsion.

Riddle folded the _Prophet _shut, then folded it about five more times and crumpled it for good measure. "Yes," he said. "Another pureblood line polluted."

"Oh?" Bansherwold said mildly, filling the kettle. "Must be the Goyles."

"Must be?"

"Well, they're the only ones left."

Riddle turned around in his chair to stare at Bansherwold. "What?"

"Well, yes. If you'd like me to count them off for you, I can, but it was practically inevitable, you realize. After the Malfoy boy married the Potter girl – her grandmother was a Muggleborn; a Malfoy marrying her was somewhat of a landmark – it set an example for the other pureblood lines." Bansherwold set the kettle on the stove and turned around.

"And none are left that are clean? _None_?" Riddle said.

"Wizarding Britain is a small place," Bansherwold said, coldness starting to creep into his voice. "This moment has been on its way for a century, Riddle, since the withering and decomposition of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black."

"What about the rest of the world?"

"Strolling down the path to the same result. Aided and abetted by Muggles' knowledge of wizards."

Riddle's skin itched with disgust. "Repulsive," he spat, throwing the _Prophet_ down on the table.

Bansherwold's answering gaze was pure derision. "Your thickheadedness is remarkable."

For a second, Riddle almost wondered if he'd heard him correctly. Then his wand was in his hand. "Would you like to repeat that?"

"Your thickheadedness. Is. _Remarkable_."

Cold fury bolted through Riddle. He gripped the anger hard in his fists. In one fluid movement, he stood, whirled around, and lashed out with his wand.

The blue stream of light dissipated in front of Bansherwold, who hadn't even bothered to draw his own wand.

"Seems you've forgotten I'm immune to your little wand-waving thing," Bansherwold said, deadpan.

Riddle felt himself heating up like a poker in a fire. He lifted his wand again, preparing to bring the flat crashing around Bansherwold's bloody ears – but then Bansherwold drew his wand, and Riddle found himself blocking attacks left and right.

It was a quick fight, and not much of a fight at that. Offense had always been Riddle's best defense, and with that rendered null, Bansherwold had Riddle disarmed within five minutes.

"What in Merlin's name is going on here?" said an angry voice from the doorway.

Riddle and Bansherwold turned as one to look at Hermione. Her hands were on her hips, her short hair scrambled, her eyes blazing with rage. "I was asleep," she said. "What on earth are you fighting about at this hour?"

"Blood status," said Bansherwold stiffly.

A brief pause. Granger seemed to wake up a little. "What about it?" she said.

"The fact that pureblood lines have been sullied by the spawn of Muggles," Riddle said curtly.

He'd seen her angry before, and honestly, it had been far more impressive when her hair had been intact. These downy chestnut curls atop her head made her look somewhat boyish as her rage drew her back up ramrod-straight.

"You are disgusting," she said, her voice tightly coiled, a spring waiting to pop up. Part of him almost admired her restraint. Better than some obnoxious Gryffindor-ish screaming session, in any case.

"Don't tell me you're a sympathizer," he said, though of course, if she was in the house of blood traitors and Muggle-lovers, he supposed he should hardly expect differently. "Or worse," he said coldly. "Perhaps you've a touch of dirty blood yourself, muddying up your –"

A blast of agony slammed into him, and he jerked backward. The small of his back met the kitchen table, and he found himself folding backward onto it, twitching and shuddering as if electrocuted. The pain originated deep in his mind, a relentless wave that dragged his thoughts every which way until they dissipated entirely.

The thoughtlessness was almost a relief. In the blind pain, resistance was useless. He didn't have to hold back the insanity. He expended only the effort to keep his vocal cords silent.

A voice pressed against the current of the pain, a cold demand. "What are you, then?" Bansherwold's voice said.

Riddle said nothing. As the effects of the curse faded and his muscles went slack, he found himself sliding from the table, slumping to the floor.

Riddle ended up on his knees somehow, his fists balled, his head tilted up defiantly. A hideous snarl tangled his features, his hair dislodged from its customary wave.

"What are you?" Bansherwold demanded, slamming Riddle's wand down onto the counter behind him. He approached and placed the tip of his own wand – dark, slender as a finger bone, probably oak – to Riddle's temple.

"Crucio," Bansherwold said, and Riddle heard, as if from a mile away, the distant intake of Granger's breath. Then he knew nothing at all. The sideways motion of his body, the crash of his flesh to cold floor, made not the tiniest indentation on the flood of fire that rushed his threshold of sensation. If his nerve endings were needles on a pine tree, he'd been set alight, made a live inferno. Every cubic centimeter of his flesh was given the most meticulous shredding treatment by a finely honed knife.

"What are you?" Bansherwold said, his voice hard and loud and inches from Riddle's ear.

Riddle gave no answer.

"_Crucio_."

Riddle's infallible pride warred with his rock-hard sense of self-preservation. The war continued for 458 interminable seconds of torture before self-preservation won out, although by that point it was hardly a conscious choice.

"HALF-BLOOD!" he screamed. The curse broke.

A second's respite, an eternity of bliss.

"What are you?" Bansherwold said, more quietly, his wandtip lightly resting against Riddle's slick forehead.

"Half-blood," Riddle slurred.

"And how am I defeating you?"

Riddle's muscles were slack in the wake of the curse's effects. He was soaked right through with sweat. His tongue feebly dipped to graze his lip, where he'd bitten hard enough to split skin. He could not find anything appropriately scathing to say in response. Even the notion of finding an intelligent response taxed him.

That was apparently acceptable. Bansherwold gave his own answer, getting back to his feet: "Because I acknowledge Muggle ingenuity. Do you know how hard they work, Riddle? Do you know anything of their long centuries of freezing and starving and dying, battling against an unforgiving world, fighting tooth and nail for life? Do you know what they had to do in order to reach where they are now? Imagine if magic had never found you. Imagine if you were never this lucky."

And at that, Riddle could not help but emit a pained gasp of laughter. "_Lucky?_"

"LOOK AT YOU!" Bansherwold bellowed, whirling on his heel. His tanned skin was flushed beet-red, his teeth bared. His omnipresent composure was nowhere to be found. He hardly even looked like the same person. "Intelligence, talent, looks, charisma; why do you think you rose to fame? You are not better than Muggles, Riddle: you are _luckier. _And I? I am not luckier than you. I'm certainly not more naturally gifted. I am smarter, by the sheer fact that I'm not blind to the truth. And if you want to survive, you'll open your bloody eyes. You'll stop being an idiot and start appreciating the very real circumstances you're facing, wherein your luck is finally – finally! – not enough for you to get a leg up on the people you hate so broadly and irrationally."

Bansherwold strode toward the door, but stopped right as he reached Hermione. He shook his head, seemingly disgusted, and turned back to look down at Riddle. "Since you forgot, let me remind you: you are a Muggle to me. Your magic is nothing to me, thanks to my use of Muggle science alongside wizardry. Looks as if Muggles don't taint magic after all – they can make it stronger. Strong enough to defeat you."

Riddle shook, partly from the physical aftermath of the Cruciatus, partly because the words seemed to have a physical force behind them, a jab to the throat. He found it hard to breathe for a second.

"Just so we're clear on the gravity of what I'm suggesting …" Bansherwold reached into his robes and drew out a vial of some clear liquid. "Here. Something that could make you a Muggle for good."

Icy coldness spread through Riddle's body.

A cure for magic. What the elder Bansherwold had threatened, wheezing, under the Eiffel Tower, decades back …

Then something took him quite by surprise.

Granger lunged forward and struck Bansherwold's hand with her own. The vial flew from his grip and hit the floor, breaking instantly. The clear liquid fizzled, shimmered a clear blue, and congealed.

Bansherwold looked at Granger with the most baffled sort of betrayal in his eyes. She pursed her lips, pure determination on her face. "No one should ever have that kind of power," she said. "And Riddle needs his magic for when he returns to his time. I won't let you change that. I can't."

Bansherwold shook his head, his face slowly settling back into its usual composure. "Sorry," he said, "but that's exactly the power of law enforcement these days, now that wizards have learned to respect science. Why would we need Azkaban when we can simply cure a wizard of the power he doesn't deserve?" He shot Riddle a hard look.

"It shouldn't be up to us to decide who deserves their natural ability," Hermione said, folding her arms. "Not you, me, or a jury. That's barbarism. It's like cutting someone's tongue out because the words they're saying don't fit your ideal."

"If the words they're saying are killing people," Bansherwold said snidely, "perhaps the world could use a little tongue-cutting."

Granger bit her lip.

"Granger's right," Riddle said, the words tasting somewhat sour. His voice was curt and formal, a class presentation, a public statement. "The removal of magic is entirely barbaric. It's like cutting out a wizard's soul." _A soul that should be theirs to change and tear and entomb as they will._ "And I'll mention that you seem awfully comfortable playing God, Bansherwold – as you have since the beginning of this mess. For someone who preaches anonymity, your self-importance is stunning."

Bansherwold considered him for a second, cocking his head. "It's not about that. Perhaps you will never understand," he said. The words were distant. "And you know nothing about me."

Riddle forced himself not to stride forward and slap the man across the face.

"Did you know," Bansherwold said, "that Muggles can transmit images of themselves across the globe? It's practically as good as Apparition, and they've been closing in on outright teleportation for years. They've been to the moon, to Mars, out into space, without wizardry. Imagine them with it." He turned on his heel, considered Hermione for a moment, and said, "Now, if you pair will excuse me, I have somewhere to be."

He strode out and shut the door behind him.

Silence rang through the kitchen.

Hermione half-turned away, as if in some childish attempt to preserve his dignity. Riddle maneuvered himself in a generally upward direction, brushed himself off. His thighs felt made from gelatin, his calves from sand. He had to lean against the table to keep from ending up where he'd started.

Both his and Hermione's eyes fixed on the blue congealed fluid lying on the floor. The implications of what that potion could have achieved seemed to fill up the room, those implications blurry and abrasive as white noise. Repulsion coursed through Riddle's veins.

Hermione cleared her throat awkwardly. Looking at the girl's torn expression, Riddle could tell she had as many problems with what had just occurred as he did, though he guessed they were an entirely different set.

"Are you all right?" she said, carefully not meeting his eyes.

"Fine," he said curtly.

"Because that was completely …"

"Unprovoked?"

"I wouldn't say that. I was thinking disproportionate."

Riddle sat on the table, steepling his fingers back against the wood. He tilted his head up to the ceiling, drew a deep breath through his nostrils, and closed his eyes.

He didn't want to admit Bansherwold was right about anything. Even the notion of Muggles not being an inferior species was still too alien for Riddle to fathom. He'd grown up with it as a fundamental constant, looking around at the weaklings that populated the orphanage, the vicious animals that led the place and that directed his hellhole of a primary school.

Yet he supposed his central philosophy could remain unchanged, even if Muggles did shift slightly in orbit around its sun: _there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. _So Muggles had power, now; had the strength to seek it. So they had evolved into something more, something civilized.

Perhaps these weren't Muggles at all, but a new race.

Still, though, they lacked _magic_. They lacked the one true life blood, the soul. How could he reconcile that with power, with worth? And if he stirred Mudbloods into the mix, how fine did the line become between this futuristic semi-Muggle and those worth acknowledging?

That said, he'd known from the beginning that not all power was the right type of power. Dumbledore's light magic, for instance, had been phenomenally powerful in its own right. Yet Riddle had nothing but derision for the man, because Dumbledore could have reached greater heights had he gone the path of Dark magic. And yet he'd shunned it.

But Muggle power …

Muggle power wasn't _light. _Muggle power was hard, cold, steel. Muggle power was cruel and electric and unforgiving – good God, did he know that all too well. Muggle power sought self-actualization at any cost, tearing unwisely and eagerly through barriers to reach new heights. Tearing through atmospheres. Tearing through the natural world.

Muggle power, he realized with something close to horror, was something very Slytherin indeed.

"What are you thinking?" said Granger's voice. When he opened his eyes, she was standing in front of him, holding his wand out to him.

After a moment, he took it from her and tucked it into his pocket. "Things have changed," he said hoarsely.

"I agree."

"Here, and outside."

"Yes." Granger cast a glance out the window. "I never expected it would last," she said quietly. "Part of me knew the magical world couldn't live in its own private idyll forever. There's simply too much. And this planet is too small, you know. Too small by half."

Riddle appraised her. Her stubborn mouth, lips pursed, eyes thick with thoughts as if clouded with cotton.

"You still want to return home, don't you?" he asked.

Her eyes snapped back onto him with clear suspicion. "What? Yes, of course," she said, a little too quickly.

"There's nothing waiting for me back there," he said, before he realized words were coming from his lips. The instant the sentence spilled out, he wished he could rope it back in, but she was already visibly digesting it.

Eventually, her response: "What?"

"There is only death back there. I _die_. That was not …" He gritted his teeth. "Not part of the plan."

She shook her head, looking horrified. "Riddle, you have to go back. You have to! You not returning, it – it would change everything. It –"

"I know that!" he snapped. "Don't you think I know that? Idiot girl."

She looked hurt. He ran a hand through his hair, let out a measured breath, and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. The problem was that he knew he had to return. It had already happened. He knew it would occur eventually … it simply had to.

But 1945 was dissociated from him, now, a written tablet of histories that he had transcended. It was not his time. He did not know if he had a time. He did not know where he would rather go, what he would rather do, when he would rather end up.

If his return was inevitable, though, he could at least go on his own terms. He would not come quietly, return silently into the embrace of a life that would end in ruination.

"I know I have to go back," he said, his words dark with bitter resignation. By the time he dropped his gaze back down to her, wary concern had spiderwebbed across her expression, a delicate clinging layer. And he wondered – for what seemed like the hundredth time – why the slightest bit of concern might manifest in her on his behalf.

Suddenly, violently, he wondered what it would be like to thread his fingers through her downy curls and pull. Move her head back slowly. Control her every moment. Make marks on her skin with his nails and teeth. Hear her frank logical superior voice strangled down to a wordless moan, a frustrated sound that she could not stop herself from making.

He looked away from her, his jaw tightening. "Do you still have the Timeglass?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then I think it's time we started making plans of our own," he said quietly.

She nodded.

* * *

><p>"I know what you're planning," said a voice in the doorway.<p>

Hermione looked up from her book. She was reading about her past exploits, those before May 1998. She found it quite interesting which pieces had been sensationalized and highlighted, as opposed to which had simply faded. This _History of Three: the Lives of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger _certainly didn't describe with any adequacy the agonizing length of the time they'd roamed through the forest, terrified and with hardly even a plan.

"Er," she said. Alen was leaning in the doorway, looking tired. His hair was rumpled, his sleeves pushed to his elbows. "Sorry?"

"I know you're planning microapplication of a segmented portion of the Timeglass's power on a reconstructed example of the megaverse, in an attempt to try gaining control over the Timeglass' power, so you won't need me to return you to your proper times."

Her mouth slowly dipped open.

She and Riddle had planned painstakingly for three hours to come up with that, to make sure they could keep it secret from Alen, to ensure they could conceal any trace of their experiments …

The words of Hermione's elder self echoed in her memory. _A man who will always – always – be one step ahead of you._

If that was true – if he knew everything that would happen – if he really was playing God –

"What are you bloody doing here?" Hermione burst out, indignance catapulting her out of her comfortable reading chair. "Why are you faffing about with us like this? Merlin, if you already know everything that's happened, everything that's going to happen –"

"But I don't," he said quietly. "Only general things. Only up to a time."

She stopped to chew on that for a second. So there were limits. That was something; that was a start. "Up to '_a time'? _What time?"

"Ahead. Far ahead."

Hermione nearly tore her hair in frustration. "What's so important about that specific time?"

"I'm hoping you'll find out," he said, his voice softening in counterpoint to her rising anger.

"Then why don't we just go there?" she said, slamming her book shut and tossing it onto the chair. She strode up to Alen, folded her sleeve over her hand, and yanked the Timeglass out of her pocket. "Why don't we go there right now and we'll just bloody see if I find out?"

"Because I'm afraid," Alen replied, "and sometimes it is easier to delay than to face a terrifying possibility."

Hermione's mind tore the words apart, searching for their meaning. Afraid for her? For himself? Of her? Of himself? Of what she might learn, what she might "find out"?

"Do you want to go back to 1998?" he said.

"What sort of question is that?" Hermione said, but for the second time that day, she found herself at a disconnect from the proper sentiment of longing. She felt defensive, felt like she needed to reiterate to herself a list of reasons to return. "Yes, of course."

"Why?"

"My friends," she said, lowering the Timeglass. "My parents."

But beyond that, she found she had not much of an answer.

Hermione was good at nothing if not research. She'd learned that here in 2075, House Elf rights were practically assumed, werewolves were socially assimilated – with governmental facilities put in place especially for their condition – and even vampires, centaurs, and other such aloof magical species had special consults for every governmental stipulation that involved them. Justice was served. Even the bigotry of the Ancient and Noble Houses had all but dissipated; ancestry remained a point of pride but was no longer a herald for a pureblood supremacy complex. How could she go back to before, knowing that less than a century afterward, the issues she sought to rectify would evaporate, leaving little more than a shadow in their wake?

Part of her ached to live in this world, where the moniker "Mudblood" was truly a badge of pride just as she'd always tried to wear it. This progressive world, where she could seek knowledge in a society that endorsed budding cooperation between science and magic. This world, where she could help fight centuries of misconceptions between wizardkind and Mugglekind, a far bigger fight than she'd ever dreamed of championing back home.

And another part of her longed to see what lay ahead. All that she loved about the magical world – all the newness that came from learning, from _knowing_ – it could develop a hundredfold. Who knew the possibilities?

Yes: her curiosity for the far future finally stirred, a great oceanic lurch in her chest, and the sensation burned, raw, saline, massive. Worse, she knew what she wanted was well and truly irrelevant. She knew her duty; she knew she had to return.

Unless there was a way …

No. She could not even think it. Of all magics, time travel could go the most disastrously wrong. She would return home and she would like it.

Except she didn't like the idea. Not fully. Not anymore.

"I'm sorry," Alen said suddenly. The thoughts raging in her head settled down to a busy stir.

She tilted her head, frowning at him. "For what?"

"For having tortured Riddle."

"Oh. I …" Hermione swallowed. Bearing witness to the torture had bothered her on more levels than she had expected, specifically the level of her mind that somehow had grown to _trust_ Alen. For all that he yanked them around, constantly told them what to do, and concealed the truth, he'd never hurt them. Not really.

Well, he'd never hurt _her. _Leaving Riddle in the Crown … and now this?

She'd known he was a Dark wizard in theory, but he didn't seem Dark in actuality. He seemed murky. Unclear waters. This seemed to dye them a shade blacker.

On another level entirely, she'd been rooted, watching Riddle jerk there on the floor like the spider had jerked in Mad-Eye Moody's fourth year demonstration. She knew the pain he'd gone through, and yet he hadn't let out a single sound. She'd been horrified, riveted, fascinated by his self-control.

She'd wanted it to stop. She hadn't wanted him to be in pain, and that in itself surprised Hermione. Vengeance was a dish she enjoyed, on special occasions; justice, certainly … but this? She had looked at Lord Voldemort's agony and felt nauseated, and had wanted nothing more than for it to end.

She felt like she might be developing some sort of attachment to the boy Dark Lord, in his current state. Adrift, like she was. Frightened and angry, like she was. Helpless.

"It was awful," she said, finally. "You shouldn't have done it."

"I don't tolerate insults to my heritage."

"But there's a reason those curses are Unforgivables."

"Unforgivable by whom? His forgiveness and your forgiveness are two very different things."

"How so?"

One corner of his mouth drew up. "I care about yours."

She let out an inadvertent chuckle. The atmosphere lightened for a second, but then Alen said, "And I am also sorry, Hermione, for my own cowardice. For putting you through … just, in hopes that it all might …" He shook his head and swallowed. For the first time, it seemed, he could not meet her eyes.

For a brief moment, Hermione saw him as if he were a boy her age, the Ravenclaw he must have been in his time at Hogwarts, a line drawn between his brows as if he were worried sick about some impending examination. She looked at him and saw shades of Harry Potter in his obvious tense frustration, shades of Ron Weasley in his earnest eyes, shades of Ginny Weasley in his snide directness, shades of Luna Lovegood in his inscrutability. She looked at him and saw herself. Scared. Brilliant. Thinking too hard. Overanalyzing and deducing and strangely unconfident. Only comfortable when everything was planned down to the tiniest moment.

This moment was not planned; she could tell that much.

She slipped the Timeglass back into her pocket and took a step toward him. "Is it me?" she said, feeling strangely brave.

"What?" He looked back down at her and seemed to realize how close she was. She saw him swallow.

"I said, is it me?" The strange bravery overtook her entirely, and she felt painted gold, filled to the skull with hot Gryffindor-red blood. She felt she might transform at any second into a lioness roaring and rampant.

He still looked uncomprehending. "Is –?"

Hermione took hold of the front of his robes and pulled him down. Her lips met his.

He went rigid for one second. Then his arms locked around her, his fingers twisting up in the back of her robes. He tilted his head, pressing, deepening the contact, his lips warm and insistent. Hermione tasted him. Salt. Melted bronze. Warm, bright light. Human and strange.

After what couldn't have been more than a few seconds, he froze again. His arms slipped away, and then he was breaking backward, staring at Hermione. "_Fuck_," he whispered. "No, it's not supposed to be y –"

She stared back, breathing somewhat harder than she felt she should have been, her heart knocking deliberately at the inside of her chest.

"Don't," he said, turned, and swept out of sight. The door creaked shut behind him.

_It's not supposed to be you. _Was that what he'd been about to say? Had she disrupted a plan? Had she done something truly unexpected?

Hermione stared at the spot where he'd been. She'd been privately wondering about the legend since he'd made his first insinuation of affection … wondering if, somehow, _she _was the one he'd loved enough to chase through time.

But that … _it's not supposed to be you._

Square one.

* * *

><p>The next day, Hermione Granger met her granddaughter.<p>

Winifred Scamander – Fred for short – was the head of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, the 38-year-old daughter of Rose Weasley and Lorcan Scamander. The latter, Luna Lovegood's son, had died years ago in a wizard purge. Hermione would have been able to tell Fred was a Lovegood descendant even if Alen hadn't told her ahead of time. Fred could have been a carbon copy of Luna, but with the strange substitution of Hermione's brown eyes and an unsettling addition of Ron's heavy layer of freckles.

"Hullo," Fred said, shaking Hermione's hand. "It's quite lovely, isn't it? The two governments mingling like this?"

"Yes, it's wonderful," Hermione said, looking about. They stood in a corner of the marbled hall, watching a knot of suited Muggle politicians mix about with robed Ministry officials. She'd come with Alen – the three of them had received official-looking invitations from the Prime Minister – but Riddle had insisted on staying at home. "I'm glad to be out of the thick of things, though. It's all a bit stressful for me in there."

"Yes, I can tell." Fred smiled. "You prefer smaller rooms in general, with fewer eyes."

"Er. Yes, I …"

"And you prefer ears to eyes, of course, especially when they're listening ears. But you haven't had a pair of those in a while, have you?"

Hermione felt like she'd been slapped. "Excuse –?"

"It's all right." Fred patted Hermione on the shoulder, a series of gentle swats that did not alleviate the sensation of being shell-shocked. "I'll listen," Fred said, "whatever you'd like to talk about. Unless, of course, you can't. No, you don't look like you can really talk about it, on second thought." She took a sip of wine. "So, lovely weather we've been having."

Hermione forced herself not to gape.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Fred sighed. "Mother used to tell me to turn it off, I'd upset people. Have I upset you? You seem upset, though that's more because of what you can't tell me, I'd hazard a guess." She tilted her head, her brown eyes incisive. Hermione felt laid bare by them. "Oh, dear. You're lost," said Fred quietly. "Aren't you? Quite lost."

_Lost …_

It was far too apt a description.

Hermione let out an honest-to-god sob. She smashed the back of her hand to her mouth instantly, but the damage was done.

Fred looked upset, guilty. "Oh, no, pet! Here." She fussed around in her pockets and fished an odd-looking fuzzy handkerchief out of one of them. "Well, go on, take it," she said bossily, brandishing the fuzzy square. But as Hermione grabbed the kerchief to wipe the now-steady stream of tears from her eyes, it squeaked and wriggled in her fingers. Hermione let out a small shriek in response and flung the kerchief back Fred's way.

"Oh, dear. I forgot how my Zim-Zim startles people at first," Fred laughed lightly. "He does love drinking tears, and he is so delightfully cuddly." She stroked the fuzzy square Zim-Zim. It emitted a purring sound. "Did you know that Zim-Zims actually played a crucial role in the Goblin Rebellion of the late 1800s?"

"I've … I've got to go," Hermione blurted.

"I hope you find your way," Fred said, with an odd little wave.

Hermione slipped out the door and Apparated back to the cramped living room of the flat. The second her feet made contact with the ground, she burst into proper tears.

Her knees buckled. She crouched right there on the hardwood floor and hugged her knees to her chest, the sound of her sobs assaulting her ears. She didn't know where she needed to be. She knew far too much to live in 1998, and yet she didn't know enough to return. She didn't know what Alen's plans were, didn't know how much longer she had to endure this insanity, didn't know how she even fit into his life. _It's not supposed to be you_. On top of that, she woke up every day with the enormity of space and time crushing in on her like a hurricane against a fleck of dust. Every day, infinity felt larger. She didn't know who she was or what she was doing.

"What are you doing?" said a stiff bewildered voice. It was only then that Hermione realized she had company.

She turned, hot embarrassment and cold dread clawing at each other inside her head. Riddle sat on the sofa behind her, a _Daily Prophet _lying abandoned in his lap, looking pristine as always but for the expression of comical alarm splayed across his face.

"What am I –? I'm c-crying," she sniffed, wiping her nose.

"Evidently," he said, but he still sounded somewhat bewildered.

She let out another sob, and it turned into a fresh bout, an instinctive tumbling stream of hiccups and gasps and ungraceful _huh-huh-huh_ sounds.

"Stop it," Riddle said.

As if she could turn it on and off like a faucet. Hermione just cried harder, burying her eyes in her forearm, feeling the soft tissues of her eyes squish around, emitting fat tears like particularly incontinent sponges.

"Stop it," Riddle repeated, but this time his voice was cold and hard, and when she looked up, the tip of his wand was inches from her nose. The scare of it made her hiccups die right there in her diaphragm, and she stopped gasping, and her eyes stopped producing tears, probably out of sheer bloody self-preservation. What on earth? What was he going to do, hex her for crying?

"There. That's better, isn't it?" Riddle looked satisfied.

Hermione just looked at him. The sobs weren't returning. He'd shocked them out of her system.

Merlin. What a way to handle things. She found a bit of a grin touching her lips.

Hermione sniffled a bit, wiped the wetness from her face with her palms, and said, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Okay."

"_Ever_." He tucked his wand away and waited for her to get to her feet. "Have you thought of any alternative to the plan we'd made?"

"Actually, yes."

"An alternative he won't already be aware of?"

"I've no idea what he knows and what he doesn't," Hermione said.

Riddle grimaced. "More's the pity that he's an Occlumens."

"Your magic wouldn't work on him anyway."

"Thank you for that helpful reminder, Granger. I should have remembered, you're not a Legilimens."

"No! That's borderline Dark magic."

He gave her a look so patronizing she felt five years old. "Oh, well, if it's _Dark, _then. Of course not."

"And just call me Hermione, would you, God knows we've been forced to spend enough bloody time around each other."

"If you insist. Hermione." Something glittered in Riddle's eyes, some sort of intention or emotion she didn't recognize. "What's the idea?"

"He mentioned something yesterday about a point in time we had to reach," Hermione said, withdrawing the Timeglass from her pocket. "Somewhere in the future, far ahead."

Riddle eyed the Timeglass warily. "Go on."

"So I was thinking, if we blast ourselves forward as far as we can, maybe we can see what he's talking about. Maybe it's something of global importance, something we'll be able to recognize if we just go far enough."

"And you can handle the pain of this?"

Her lips pressed together. She gave him her most withering glare.

"It was an earnest question." He let out a slow breath. "How can we be guaranteed that Bansherwold will find his way to us?"

"Well, he's done it consistently this far."

"I'd rather not be trapped in 4532, if it's all the same to you."

"If he doesn't show up, we'll have the months we need to learn how to use this thing properly," she said. "In any case, that's the idea."

Riddle nodded. "Sounds reasonable enough. Shall we be off, then?"

"Wh – now?"

"Yes, of course, now. The less time he has to figure it out, the better. What, do you have something particularly urgent here in 2075?"

For a split second, Hermione thought of an aged Harry, an ancient Ron, both still overseas. She thought of her granddaughter whom she could not handle, her son of whom she had only heard, and her murdered daughter. She thought of lips pressed hard and dizzying to hers.

"No," she said, and held out the Timeglass.

Riddle took her other hand and gripped. He met her gaze squarely. His eyes were dark, serious, full of conviction. She found comfort in them and wondered if she was going bloody mad.

Then her hand slipped out from beneath her sleeve to touch the Timeglass, and at the same moment, his palm hit the object on its cold surface.

Unfortunately for the new plan of Tom Riddle and Hermione Granger, they'd been well and truly marooned out here in 2075 for a while, and as such, something had changed. For the first time, they truly doubted where and when they belonged. The anchors that had firmly attached them to their proper respective times had loosened, retracted, and now swayed deep in the bowels of the ocean, creating strong and undetectable currents. The two were no longer sure of anything, really: Tom Riddle was no longer sure of his most concrete doctrine; Hermione Granger was unsure of which fight was her biggest fight, which world needed her most. She was also unsure of how she felt about anything, or indeed, anyone. He was unsure if he felt at all, or if there were finally something there besides fear and hatred. If there were possibly a spark of fascination, or of desire.

They were two foggy signatures left by a tiny biplane in a sky full of mist. They had, at last, become anonymous, and so they were, at last, strangely free.

Unfortunately for Hermione Granger, she realized all of this at the very moment the Timeglass touched her skin.

Tom Riddle did not realize all of this; in fact, he realized none of it, but unluckily for him, he was one of the most powerful wizards ever born.

A combination of knowledge and talent is a dreadful thing.

The whine in the air was deep and threatening, and when they blasted out of the cramped living room of the flat, they barreled far away from home, farther than they had ever even considered possible. They tore their way through universes like a jackhammer through sawdust. They ripped into eternity with greedy, potent fingers. The pain was a firestorm. The pain was an animal. The noise was an unending and infinite roar.

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><p>"<strong>There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me."<strong>

**- Gustave Flaubert**

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><p><strong>Welp.<strong>

**As a forewarning, the next couple of chapters might be pretty damn short. Still dicking around with some things to see what works, but I just don't want you to get your hopes up if you get an update on like Friday and it turns out to be actually not much at all.**

**lol hermione and bansherwold's ship name though. banshermione. hermione and a banshee**

**Reviews are the light of my life, the fire of my loins. What. Who said that. Someone weird. I don't know. Bye.**

**-speech**


	11. Undated

**Lo! The fire of my loins is quenched. (Oh, Christ.) Bless you all: ShimmeringWater, Nytefyre, YumiDoesTheMacarena, Poppyxxxx, summerful21, Beserked2, Ella Palladino, FaeBreeze, Ember Nickel, mh21, angrypixels, Quinn Spencer, BlackShirt16, marana1, nina, GinnyRules, AvoidedIsland, these two i s2g (i know right), immortal love rodd, and 3!**

**Mini-chapter, as promised. Again, there may be a couple of these briefer-length ones. I'll try to be prompt with them since they're mini. (if there's not a prompt update then it means i'm consolidating them into a normal length guy)**

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><p><strong>"If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way."<strong>

**- Janet Fitch**

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><p>After a while, the pain became something like a drug, brightening and sharpening the edges of Tom's vision. Here and there, he caught images in the blinding rush of light. The leafy top of a tree. An unfamiliar face. A planet from a hundred thousand kilometers away.<p>

Even as they shot through the molten seam of universes, Tom realized something had gone awry. This felt different from their previous transports forward; this time they were plummeting and spinning head-over-heels into another dimension entirely. His brain hounded him to draw his wand, but he knew it would be foolishness to let go of Hermione's hand, and he physically couldn't budge his palm from the Timeglass. Something had glued it there, some great intractable force.

He couldn't see her. He could only feel the touch of her fingers. Everything was blinding and whirling faster than ever.

Tom poured every inch of his self-control into prying his hand up from the surface of the Timeglass. "DROP IT!" he roared into the light, and as Hermione's hand tightened on his, he could feel her strain, too.

After what must have been a solid three minutes, his skin finally peeled away from the glass.

It was like being hit by a Swedish Short-Snout head-on. Tom slammed into the face of some planet back-first. The breath vanished from his body in one great go. Beside him, Hermione made impact standing up. Her leg hit with a sickening _crack, _twisted at some oblique angle, and she crumpled all at once, instantly and soundlessly.

A strange sort of heat formed in his palms as he watched her collapse. He wondered what it was.

Still gasping for breath, he drew his wand, prepared to conjure cover if the environment was hostile. But the air appeared breathable enough, he realized, once he eked a proper bit of it into his lungs. He supposed that aligned with the Second Chaotic Assonance Theory – a magical entity, if thrown into a vacuum of sheer chance, will naturally gravitate toward areas similar to its previous habitats. Probably a biological survival technique from Apparating Trilobites, back in the days of the primordial swamp.

Tom lowered his wand and glanced over at Hermione, who was still huddled over her leg, alarmingly still and silent. He wondered if she'd fainted.

He moved over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped so violently that he flinched back in response, and when she looked up at him, her face was greener than the surface of the planet they stood on.

"Lie back," he said briskly, with a second of silent appreciation that she hadn't descended into histrionics.

She collapsed back onto the barren green plain, her eyes crossing and rolling, tiny noises slipping from her mouth. He wondered if she would throw up. He hoped she would find somewhere else to do it than on him.

Tom found an odd force pulling downward at his lips as he severed half her pant leg to look at her tibia. It was as if his mouth were telling him he was upset at the sight of the broken bone, the shard of bloody red that had gutted its way out from her calf and now dripped resolutely. Why should he be upset? It wasn't as if he weren't accustomed to gore.

Granger's face, though, was unpleasant to look at in its current state. Not aesthetically – well, not any more so than usual – but in the way that he might look at his own hand and find a fingernail turning black. He wouldn't go around injuring himself on her watch; he expected her to do the same. They were supposed to be keeping each other standing, for Merlin's sake.

It took a little over twenty minutes for the healing spell to sink into the bone properly. In that time, both Riddle and Hermione had categorized their surroundings.

"What is this?" Hermione said, looking upward. A vortex of a sky spiraled straight up above them, a silent tornado, tiny fragments of stars and moons glittering in the soundless whirl. The plain on which they'd landed stretched on forever in all directions, windless, some sort of hard material that was not stone. It was uninhabited save for their bodies.

"It's not what we wanted," Riddle said, which was the only thing he could ascertain.

"D'you think this is Earth in another universe? Where something along the line went differently?" Hermione said.

Riddle's first instinct was to say, _Who cares?_ but something kept his mouth buttoned: a strange injection of perspective.

He saw himself sitting beside his only companion in all the unending vaults of space and time. She was Gryffindor to the core, wasted all her time on moral upkeep, and Merlin knew she was probably a Mudblood, too; he'd deduced enough about her past for that to be a reasonably sure guess, but he definitely wasn't going to bloody ask her to verify it. Here – as he stared around at a blank void of a world, empty of life, empty of civilization, empty of everything except the feather-fine touch of air on his skin – he realized he didn't care about any of those things. He _could_ not care about them. Here, she was a human being, and she was the only barrier between himself and more solitary confinement.

Panic took his heart in two iron fists and squeezed until he thought he might burst. How could he go back to his time and tell nobody about this? _How?_ He'd go insane again. Perhaps he was still insane. Maybe the insanity would always be there, hanging over his shoulder like a prized kill after a hunt, waiting to burst back into life …

He rubbed at his forehead. "Maybe," he said. "Or perhaps the chance of it being Earth at all was so small that it was hopeless from the start."

"Should we try going back to Earth, then?"

He pressed his lips together and forced himself to his feet. "Yes. Can't see how we can make things much worse."

Hermione got to her feet as well. "We're going to get back," she said, with a brave try at resolution. "We'll figure this out. This time, focus as hard as you can on Earth. There must be a pattern to it, to mastering it. Trial and error."

"And once we do get back, you'll return to 1998," Riddle said, surveying her clinically. How couldn't she have realized what would happen? "You'll see the people who've been dead for decades, the vast majority of whom you have already outlived. You'll want to tell people about this, about all this, about the future. You will want to tell the world what's coming next, that you know how and why and for what purpose everything will change. You won't be able to. You'll arrive back in 1998 and everything will be meaningless."

Hermione's lip quivered, and as she stared him down, he realized she _had _already thought those things, a hundred times. She - somehow - just didn't care. "I'll do it because I have to do it," she said, which sounded approximately like the most idiotic thing he'd ever heard.

"What if you didn't have to?" Riddle said, crossing his arms. "What if for once you let your insufferable sense of _duty _and _honor _fall behind what you want and need as a human being? Time cures its own ills. What if you stayed here for the rest of your life?"

"Why should you care what I do?"

"Don't flatter yourself," he said icily, though for a second he wondered exactly that: why was he pursuing this debate, trying to convince her to break free of her self-imposed shackles of _duty? _It certainly wasn't his concern.

"So, staying here for the rest of your life," she said, looking around the flat green planet, her expression deadpan. "Is that what you're planning on doing?"

"I'm certainly curious as to whether I could. I wonder if it's possible. I wonder if someone might step up as an impostor Lord Voldemort, the one I've read about, the _weak mortal man who died!_" Riddle's words rang out through his teeth.

Hermione considered him. Riddle saw no sympathy on her face, though perhaps a touch of compassion. He saw no judgment, though perhaps a touch of disappointment. And that disappointment, that compassion, enraged him. He wanted to take her chin in his hand and tear that expression blank with rough lips and fingertips. He wanted to bite the consternation right off her mouth, rip the lines from her forehead, get so close to those brown eyes that the mere presence of him would be all she understood, all she knew, all she cared about.

He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering how these strangely specific desires had pummeled their way into his mind. Usually he was only struck by vague plans of inflicting pain, not all of this odd … animalistic …

"Riddle," she said, at last, and her voice sounded exhausted, and weary. "There's so much of the world. Haven't you seen enough to realize?"

"Oh, please. Realize what, exactly? Let me guess: that rulers rise and fall and that's the way of things; that I am one of infinite conceptions of a tiny flawed insect and I should be happy with my own iteration?"

"No, that's not what I meant." Hermione sighed. "Our choices, our actions, our existence – none of it is even _about_ ourselves. The world is too big to know. It's certainly too big for us to stake a claim on it. We're grains of sand, Riddle. We were tossed onto a beach and left to sift." She shrugged. "Be happy with the things you've sifted through. You've been given far more of them than most."

"Again, this patently false – _lucky_. Just like Bansherwold. You think I'm _lucky_." Riddle couldn't help but spit the word.

"No. You're not lucky. You're lonely."

He let out his most derisive laugh. It sounded small and strangely sad in the huge open space.

Hermione took one step closer. Her small hand ran slowly through her hair. He clenched his teeth tight together, hating how careful she was being, hating the hesitance in her motions, as if he needed coddling. He wanted to yank that hand from her hair. He wanted to pin her by her hair to the surface of this planet and crouch over her, lean down over her, hear those asinine philosophical ponderings turn into curses, raw sounds –

She said, "You know, maybe you wouldn't need a whole world's domination to anchor yourself to, if you had a person or two instead."

At the insinuation, a cold layer of instantaneous dismissal slammed down on him. "Timeglass," he said curtly. "Let's go. Now. Before you say anything else so pathetic and ridiculous."

She didn't protest, but her expression grew hard. And as she drew the Timeglass out in her sleeve - as she held out her hand for him to take - she stared resolutely over his shoulder.

Her averted eyes were the last straw. No one would ignore him, especially not her.

Riddle strode forward, slid his arm around her. His forearm locked into the small of her back, and his hand clamped to her waist. He felt her inhalation as he yanked her tightly against him.

Now her attention was certainly all his. It did not soothe his frustration. It agitated him further. Her eyes burned up into his and he wanted to tell her, _You are wrong. I need nobody but myself. I need nothing but myself._ He wanted to growl it down her fucking throat. He wanted noises from her, a scream, hard hoarse breathing. He wanted control, he wanted release, he wanted a fight, he wanted concession, he wanted her to stop being so goddamn noble about going back to her time – he wanted everything from her.

The girl was his constant. The girl was his one remainder from the life this journey had ruined. The girl was exasperating, obstinate, willful, argumentative, and very nearly incandescent. The girl was _his_. The only thing he had left.

It did not occur to Tom Riddle, of course, that if she was all he had, he was perhaps as much hers as she was his.

She shoved the Timeglass against his hand. The door opened on infinity once more.

* * *

><p><strong>"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."<strong>

**- Maya Angelou**

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><p><strong>Leave a message at the shit! Oh, oops, is the censor beep off? my bad<strong>

**-speech**


	12. Undated, pt 2

**One more mini-chapter after this one, and then we're back to regular length. Thanks for hanging tight!**

**Reviewers are the most pristine of Apparating Trilobites: Account Currently on Hiatus, rolls, EriEka127** (update times vary. not counting minichapters, a chapter a week is what i want, a chapter every couple weeks is more likely esp. after the end of summer),** Ella Palladino, ShimmeringWater, 013bela, marana1, Nytefyre, TheLightningScar, Quinn Spencer, afalcone10, Poppyxxxx, Anom **(ahh that is always the question, is it not?)**, immortal love rodd, Guest, lizzywithfire, Cissy, FerrumVigro **(! you compared me to bioshock i can die happy. seriously)**, Blue Fire and Red Ice, MMternit, Beserked2, Lost Soul Here, AvoidedIsland, GinnyRules, aaand murtagh799.**

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><p><strong>"In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance."<strong>

**-Jeanette Winterson**

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><p>When Hermione's hand finally unstuck itself from the surface of the Timeglass, she plunged down into a scalding ocean.<p>

Almost faster than her body could register the blinding pain, Tom Riddle had drawn his wand, and a thick bubble of protection formed around them, forcing the raging scarlet waters back. It looked like a sea of boiling blood, lapping at their confines.

Tom's eyes shut, and he held a hand over his wand, murmuring an extended incantation. The bubble expanded further, giving them a bit of breathing room, and solidified, turning more opaque.

Hermione moved gingerly to take her wand from her own robes. The burns that had already swelled into life on her bare calf were grisly at best. The damaged red skin shimmered, emitting an angry heat. She could feel the blisters from the boiling ocean all the way up to her waist under her clothes, although it all felt dim compared to the hellfire roaring on her exposed skin.

Riddle took half a limped step. Hermione glanced over at him and flicked her wand in his direction. His wand rose instinctively as if to block the spell, but then a cool wind knocked him back a step, ruffling his hair, and he lowered his wand as the charm went to work on his burns. Hermione cast the same external healing charm on herself. When the wind cleared from around her body, the damaged skin had melted back to its original state.

As she and Tom sank to the floor of the bubble in unison, she mulled over how oddly used to each other they'd become. Even the frantic, hostile conversation of the green planet had had a strangely personal note to it, even if he'd all but told her he couldn't care less what she did with her life. _Don't flatter yourself. _Honestly …

"Were you thinking of Earth when we left?" Tom asked.

"Yes," Hermione lied. Really, at the moment of their departure, it had been difficult to focus on anything but his overwhelming closeness, the fierce grip of his hand on her hip, the breath from his slightly-parted lips brushing against her forehead, the way she could feel his hipbone digging into her body just below her waist. She'd tried to focus on anything but him, anything at all, but it had been an ill-fated attempt. Hermione found herself suddenly glad there were a few feet between them. "This go around," she said, "we should both think of a specific time and place, probably."

"1998," he said. "In the Chamber, right when we left."

"Yes, that's a good idea." Hermione looked out at the water, trying not to be afraid of how vicious their surroundings were. The sky was empty and black, devoid of moon, stars, anything at all. The dull water churned ferociously.

"Where did you and Bansherwold go for the ten months of my imprisonment?" Tom asked suddenly.

Hermione looked over at him, though he was busy staring out at the dark blood-tossed world. "Well, it was actually just one night," she said, before really thinking about how the words would sound.

At that, he met her eyes. Staring at him, she wondered if he was angry. In all honesty, that simmering glint in his dark eyes looked like something quite different from anger, but … well, there was no reason for him to look _possessive; _that was just ridiculous. Wasn't it?

"Not … er, like that," she said, her cheeks turning an unfortunate Gryffindor scarlet. "I just appeared back in that cottage on the plain and he explained what the Timeglass does."

Tom let out a noncommittal sound and looked away again, though his hands seemed to have tightened on his wand.

"He also told me some things about his past," Hermione said. "He was orphaned by the American Civil War; he was living on the London streets when his Hogwarts letter was delivered. He couldn't even read."

"In that case, how did he read the letter?"

"The messenger read it aloud."

"Special treatment," Tom said, almost absentmindedly. "As I understood it, Hogwarts didn't do that sort of thing often before the Reorganization Statutes of 1903."

Hermione nodded. _Hogwarts, A History _had devoted half of chapter twenty-eight to the Reorganization Statutes, measures to keep students more reliably informed and connected to the Wizarding World when they dispersed over summer. Before then, the Hogwarts mail system had operated on patchy networks of family names and rough divinations of Muggle-borns' locations.

Riddle looked somewhat distant. Hermione wondered if that was a patch of residual madness from the Crown.

"I couldn't believe he left you there for ten whole months," she said quietly. "I was really angry, actually. I had quite the row with him over it."

His lips thinned. He shook his head, but gave no response.

She bit her lip. "I'm sor –"

"Don't apologize for something you had no chance of preventing. Waste of time, waste of breath."

Hermione swallowed. "Are you … you know, all right?"

She half-expected him to scoff, not respond at all, or snap at her. His response came as a surprise. "I am intact," he said crisply, "and I stubbornly refuse to let a band of Muggles and their electric contraptions make any lasting marks."

"Well, in that case, thank God for your obstinacy," Hermione said, the words out before she could filter them.

He gave her a disbelieving look. She felt the sudden inclination to laugh.

After a minute or so, Tom said, "I've been giving more thought to that ridiculous legend than is really appropriate."

"Me too," Hermione said. "I actually thought … but … well, never mind."

"Thought what?"

"I thought maybe his supposed 'lost love' might be me," she admitted, her cheeks turning pink. "Which is ridiculous, of course," she added hastily. "Anyway, it can't be."

"Why not?"

"Because I kissed him just to see, and he wasn't exactly … receptive."

"You –" said Tom, but he cut himself off instantly, as if he hadn't meant to say anything.

"Yes?" she said curiously, but he gave no response except a shrug of his slim shoulders. It did not satisfy her wonderings, especially since the smolder in his eyes had kindled to an outright flame.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Well, I, erm, I kissed him, and for a moment he … you know, responded, or …" Hermione wished her cheeks would stop glowing. She felt like a living Christmas ornament. "But then he pushed me away. Bolted. He looked distressed, you know - and he kept avoiding me afterward."

Tom shook his head, leaning back against the sloped wall of the bubble with his arms crossed. "Still."

"Still what?"

"You'd have to be an idiot, or blind, not to see the way he looks at you from time to time."

Hermione swallowed. "I … well, I mean …"

"It must have something to do with you," Tom said, closing his eyes. "Merlin, even considering this _legend _rubbish is completely absurd, but … maybe it's tangentially related. If he's bent on ruling the world, he must have a plan. Maybe you factor into this plan, and maybe this other … _person _is also a part of it."

"Maybe his lost love is you," Hermione said, keeping her expression wide-eyed and earnest.

Tom narrowed his eyes at her. "I highly doubt that, unless you think it's a standard way of expressing affection to lock someone in solitary confinement for a year."

"Naturally. That's the only way I ever express affection."

He gave her another unimpressed look. "You're in quite the mood."

"I'm always like this," she said with a sigh, sinking back against the bubble wall opposite him. "I just don't show it around you, at risk of being Transfigured into a vampire bat or having my skin cursed off or what have you."

"Prudent."

She found herself smiling. His expression was one third offended, one third nonplussed, and one third drily amused, and on his gaunt, serious features, it was an oddly entertaining mixture.

"Shall we go again?" she said, getting to her feet.

"Yes." He approached her, fingers curling around the handle of his wand. "It's best I keep this drawn in case we land in another unfriendly location. Put your arm around me."

Tentatively, she slipped her arm around his back.

"Hermione," he said testily. "Unless you'd prefer we get split up in the middle of ripping through space-time, you're going to need to hold on tighter than that."

"Right." Pointedly not looking at him, she constricted her grip, tugging him closer. He was still frighteningly skinny - she could feel his spine like a hard cord against her forearm. Her mouth slowly dried. Her heart felt like it was contracting.

Almost immediately, shock, tinged with horror, rang deep in her chest. Merlin, this was _Lord Voldemort _she was holding onto. _Get a hold of yourself, Hermione! _She rattled off a string of curses at herself mentally.

"Timeglass," he said quietly. His voice was too close. She heard it from his chest rather than his lips. In an ill-judged moment, she lifted her eyes to meet his. In his irises, she could see bands of deep brown against black like spokes of a bicycle. He was looking down at her with that unidentifiable burn raging higher, a dangerous wildfire of a gleam.

Hermione didn't understand. She'd thought Tom Marvolo Riddle had nothing inside him. As much as she reasoned with him, spoke with him like she'd speak to a normal person, she'd thought - no, _known - _that he was emotionally empty, psychopathic, a power-obsessed shell. But now it was like she could see every one of his actions since he'd strode into the Chamber in 1998, every tiny action lined up in a row: the healing of her broken leg not an hour ago; the calm way he'd spoken with her in the headquarters of Merlin's Order; his manic despair during the time they'd shared in the Crown; the way he'd stewed over the possibility of infinity up to the moment of battle in the Palace of Westminster. And there was something more behind that than power. Something more than madness and cruelty. There was in him a fervor beyond ferocity, a thirst for something that could make up for all he felt he'd been cheated of, a hunger for knowledge and for human gravity and for true everlasting importance. More than all this, there was in him a deep and brittle need to shove the world's inhabitants away as quickly as possible so that they could not see, so that they could not know.

"1998," she said vaguely, forcing the image of the Chamber to the forefront of her mind. "The Chamber of Secrets."

He inclined his head in the tiniest of nods, bringing his face that much closer to hers.

She was suddenly all too aware of the warmth of his skin, separated from her hand by only the thin layer of his shirt. He did not feel empty. He felt human. An illusion? A deception?

She drew the Timeglass from her pocket and held it up. It slipped from her sleeve into her hand, and his hand wrapped over and around hers, and they left the sea of blood far behind.

* * *

><p><strong>"Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities."<strong>

**- D.T. Suzuki**

* * *

><p><strong>hermione and tom awkward-ing it up in space awyeah space.<strong>

**as always, thanks for reading and holla at me -**

**xx speech**


	13. Undated, pt 3

**AH HA HA so remember when I conjectured that this story would be around 15 or 16 chapters? So not happening. (sorry, my ability to guess the scope of projects is always pathetically awful.) You're stuck with me until 19 or 20. Possibly more. Of course, only if you're willingly stuck. Feel free to only read until chapter fifteen, if that makes you happy. Whatever floats your Galleon, dude.**

**Something new this chapter (which actually turned out normal length, despite what I thought was going to happen!). Hope you like. Warning, bits of it may feel like an acid trip.**

**speech**

* * *

><p><strong>"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."<strong>

**- Edna St. Vincent Millay  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Alengurd Bansherwold arrived back from an evening of mingling to an empty flat and set about waiting.<p>

Alen had grown to despise waiting more and more. If patience was a virtue, it certainly wasn't his. Which was inconvenient, as so much of what he'd been doing in transit involved just that: excruciating delays, some of months, some of days, some of minutes that somehow felt longer than the months. The planning itself was fine; he was practically a planner by occupation. But biding his time and skulking about different years to set up the events just so? It took astounding amounts of bloody awful _waiting_.

_It's worth it, _he reminded himself, and busied himself with preparing for the New Apotheosis tracker he knew he'd have to set up.

Admittedly, it surprised him that Hermione and Riddle had taken off so suddenly. He'd debunked their first plan as efficiently as possible in hopes of expediting the process, so really, it had all worked perfectly … but after 1878, part of him was still unused to having things fall into place. It had been so long since 1878 – yet this certain type of paranoia seemed to have intensified rather than faded over time, growing like an unwelcome weed in the folds of his mind.

Alen warded off memories of Gellert, gently reminding his teeth to stop grinding, as he would probably need to use them at some point, and not as some powdered element in a potion. Bitterness was no use, anyway. There was nothing he could have done.

In all honesty, though, he hated and resented his older self for 1878 as much as he despised Grindelwald. Inasmuch as that was the case, Alen felt vindictively satisfied at having sent his older self to meet his fate.

Alen brought his wand to his wrist, tapped the watch-like Gauge, and murmured, "_Ascorius_." A gentle hiss of breath slipped between his lips as the Gauge's centimeter-long needle slid from inside his vein. He unbuckled the Gauge from his arm and laid it gently on the counter, eyeing the ruby-red liquid within. As he laid it flat, the liquid peeled away from its 1/6th mark into a flat, viscous line.

His Gauge had been frozen for the last twelve years, of course. Admittedly, tracking his lifeline was among the more obsessive of dark magics, but it reassured him to have the physical reminder there, just as the sight of his unaging face in the mirror reassured him daily. He had especially needed these petty comforts while dealing with his older self, as disgusting and withered as the man had been.

Vanity was such a petty vice in general. Occasionally disgusted by his own obsession with physical intactness, Alen made excuses to himself for it through reminders that Ravenclaws tended toward it … but it was a weak argument. He knew that vanity could hardly be pinned on his House affiliation, no more than could his odd preference for the color orange or his crippling terror of what might happen in 2349.

Alen crouched and drew a small golden cauldron from beneath the kitchen sink. He filled it with water, set it on the table while humming lightly to himself, and let a drop of blood fall from the pinprick on his wrist into the cauldron. It swirled down, a single unfolding bud.

He reaffixed his Gauge and the silver needle slotted back into its place in his vein. He checked its measurement compulsively. The red liquid did not budge.

When all was said and done, acquiring the secret to the Elixir of Youth had been embarrassingly easy with Timeglass in hand. All it had taken was investigation of a rumor in the mid-2100s and a brief expedition into the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. Admittedly, the actual ingredients for the potion – including a teaspoon's worth of matter from a white dwarf (so dense it weighed approximately five tons) and an entire pelt from the incredibly toxic Aggleback – had been somewhat difficult to rustle up. Worth it, though. Of course.

Alen went back to the preparation of his New Apotheosis Enhancer.

Jackson's New Apotheosis Theorem stated that the tunnels through space-time were detectable because magical energy left fine traces wherever it went that held a certain magical gravity. However, to track these traces to other universes entirely was far beyond Alen's – or, well, anyone's – natural capacity. As such, a simple gravitational tracker to find the magical signature would not suffice, and barbaric as it seemed, blood magic was always the greatest amplifier of power. In 2045, for instance, a new blood-based derivation of the Polyjuice Potion had been developed which could make someone look like someone else for the rest of their entire life. In 2051, an odd blood-based experiment on Veritaserum developed in the Department of Mysteries had given one test subject a brief ability to read truths out of people's minds. This latter sample had been destroyed immediately, the method for preparation stricken from all record.

As for adding blood to the process of a New Apotheosis Tracker, it could amplify sensitivity to traces a thousand-fold. With the other potion-based tweaks Alen had designed, he could conceivably determine someone's location anywhere in the megaverse, piggybacking tracers from tunnel to tunnel.

Alen poked around under the kitchen cabinet a bit more and came up with one bottle which contained three dark hairs from Riddle and another which held three from Hermione. It hadn't been hard to find them – hell, he could probably have just walked into the bathroom and retrieved hairs from the drain – but he still felt a little awkward as he uncorked the vials and sprinkled the hairs into the cauldron. Alen supposed that he'd become so accustomed to his own privacy that invading others' felt practically sacrilegious. He hadn't used Legilimency since 1878.

He was halfway through shredding glowing purple Garblick roots when his wait ended. A gasping Hermione burst out of the air in front of him. Her hair had grown out to shoulder-length, a satisfying bushy sunburst. The sight of it lit something up in Alen's chest like a candle. He'd expected himself to be the deliverer. This was a pleasant surprise.

He laid down the knife immediately, flicked his wand at the cauldron to suspend its stewing time, and steadied Hermione by the elbow. "All right?" he said.

She nodded and straightened up, her eyes darting around the kitchen. "This is the right time, isn't it?" she panted, her whole body heaving with the need for oxygen.

"Perfect timing," he said, letting go her elbow. Curiosity prickled at the back of his neck. "If I may ask, when are you from?"

She gave him a warning look, her breaths steadying.

He pressed further: "You're not from …"

"Yes?"

"From afterward, are you?" Even using all his available restraint, he couldn't keep the taut edge from his voice.

Hermione's warm brown eyes softened. She gave him an apologetic look. "I … you know I can't say anything about the future."

The candle in Alen's chest flared, roaring into a sudden inferno. His muscles tightened all the way down to his toes, and he restrained himself from using Legilimency on her right then and there, breaking his twelve-year streak. Curiosity burned at the back of his mouth like bile. "So you are," he managed, and as the words came out, more spilled over, words he knew he should not be saying. "I need to know, Hermione. I must know. Tell me; you've got to tell me if –"

"No," she said. Her voice was firm, but not unkind, and as always, he was drawn to the gravity in her expression, the full-fledged feeling she devoted to every moment of her life. Sometimes, even just looking at her, he thought he might break down.

"It's more important than you could possibly know," he said, though he was grasping at straws and he knew it. She may have been from 2349, or she may have been from bloody 2897 – possibly, she knew more about the situation than he himself did at this point. In all honesty, he only knew the bare minimum of information about the Horde. He didn't even know what he was supposed to do about them. His older self had been infuriatingly, purposefully vague on that subject.

"Alen," Hermione chided. She took a step toward him, her expression creasing. "Really, I know it's been a long wait, and a long … process, but you're nearly … just a little more patience."

He bit back a curse. He could not look at her.

"Anyway, I've come to give you the Timeglass, of course," she said, withdrawing the Timeglass in a plastic bag and handing it over. "So you can fetch us back. I'll be down to retrieve it in 2102 when you land. July the first."

"How do you plan to get to 2102 without the Timeglass?"

"Time machine."

So she was certainly from after 2321, at the least. "And you're returning to your future time now via … what method, exactly?"

She withdrew a jet-black disk from her pocket, one engraved with runes. "Active manifestation of Priori Incantatem. Should undo the Timeglass' effects, get me back to 23 –" She cut herself off.

A silence wobbled between their eyes. Hers were masked. He wondered if she had used the Timeglass to get here herself, or if his future self had assisted, sent her back. If she _had _used it herself – if she'd mastered it …

He didn't let himself wonder what that would mean.

"Please," he burst out, anxiety throbbing in his temple like an overactive vein.

She shook her head, took out her wand, and placed it to the surface of the disk. With a sibilant noise somewhat like deflation, she faded from the air, gone as quickly as she'd arrived.

Alone again – alone as bloody ever – Alen hunched over the kitchen table, his fists balled and trembling. He slammed one of his fists down onto the wood with a tremendous crash and an animal noise of rage tore from his throat.

Then he straightened up, his features eerily blank. He flicked his wand, returned to shredding the roots, and his hands didn't shake.

###

_Bang._ They were certainly not on Earth, let alone in 1998. Hermione and Tom appeared in the middle of what seemed to be an ocean of writhing white strings. Their bodies moved neither downward nor upward; they could hardly move at all, supported by the strings' mass. Hermione wondered what the light source was. Cream-colored luminescence seemed to issue from everywhere, every place where the strings touched each other.

She tried clawing the tiny strings away from her face, tried to gasp in a breath. She got a mouthful of what felt like living plastic angel-hair spaghetti. She was going to suffocate.

Suddenly, a thin layer of air painted itself over her skin, creeping, spreading. It slid up her nose and down into her lungs. She didn't recognize the spell, but she felt eternally grateful that Tom had thought to keep his wand drawn.

Her arm still tight around him, Hermione made an executive decision and battled to draw the Timeglass from her pocket. "Again!" she said, trying to avoid getting any of the wriggling strings in her mouth. As Riddle's hand found hers amidst the chaos, she shifted the Timeglass from sleeve to their skin.

_Bang. _They appeared in a deep black void, the air so dense that she felt it might crush her to death. Adrenaline drove her through the residual pain of the journey: she dragged her arm back to her pocket as Tom struggled to flick his wand properly. Blessedly, a sphere of something bright blossomed out from his wandtip, and the resistance from the air lessened. She withdrew the Timeglass, holding it back up between them. He grabbed on.

_Bang. _They ripped out onto on a wobbling, jellylike surface of some colorless iridescent sheen. Her foot broke the surface and sank about a foot in. More gel floated through the air, in blocks and blobs and wavering tails, glistening in the blistering red sunlight. A deep, resonant, hollow moan drifted across the surface of the place, making the gel ripple. Foreboding struck Hermione like a hammer. She drew the Timeglass, desperation washing hotly across her.

_Bang. _They landed at the peak of some perilous spire, its tip ivory-white and barely three feet across, the only thing separating them from a thousand-foot drop. Other spires rose around them, dreadful and thin like delicate fangs puncturing a black tarry landscape. Tom teetered wildly, and she clutched him closer, her palms breaking out in an instinctive sweat.

As she took the Timeglass from her pocket, her hand slipped. It dropped away, flew into the abyss glinting like a teardrop. She let out an instinctive shriek.

"Villinger's Bond," Tom's voice said instantly, close and jarring and immensely reassuring, and she let out a quivering breath, drawing the Timeglass from where it had reappeared in her pocket. She glanced up at him this time before holding up the Timeglass. The tiniest bit of a smirk touched the corner of his lip.

_Bang. _They were within a curved cloth-like sphere, a thousand different shades of sky stitched together like patchwork above them, a team of black creatures trundling around them like disembodied wheels. As they swiveled to face Tom and Hermione, she felt faint, not to mention nauseous from the unrelenting agony of the transit, which was not fading when they landed anymore. The aliens emitted bursts of color to each other, airy whizzing noises passing back and forth from their shiny black surfaces. Tom raised his wand, but she said, "No! Don't frighten them! Let's –" and with that, she tugged out the Timeglass again.

_Bang._ They were on a mossy surface that was moving, swinging through a cloud. It took a moment before Hermione realized that the surface itself was moving, too, undulating. And as they passed out of the cloud, soaked by the moisture, her breath stopped in her chest. They were borne through a vast catalog of sky on the arm of a creature so enormous she thought she could never call the giants of Earth giants again. The colossi swam through the sky's infinite navy depths with hundreds of arms, their bodies miles long from tip to tail, moving slowly and gracefully and flickering like continents of green living fire. Their tongues lolled out of cavernous mouths and lapped at black thunderheads. A gust of wind slapped Hermione back to life, nearly shoving her off the colossus' arm. Slipping, she fumbled for the Timeglass.

_Bang. _A world with massive insectoid creatures that fired glass from their pincers. _Bang. _A world where aliens the size of ships nested atop airborne seas of swans. _Bang. _A world filled with a hazy, amniotic light and an earsplitting, unceasing roar. Nowhere to stay. Nowhere to think. _Bang. Bang. Bang. _It grew too painful to think at all. It grew too painful to do anything except forge forward through hostile world after hostile world, screams choked up in her esophagus.

God knew how much time passed.

_Bang._

This time, upon landing, Hermione's knees collapsed. Her nerves were shredded, so brimful with pain it was remarkable that she could still feel anything at all. She brought Tom crashing down with her, and for a minute they could not move at all. They just lay there, sprawled over each other, paralyzed amid a cascade of what felt like completely normal rain.

She dared to hope for a moment that they had actually, by some freak accident, found their way back to a lock of universes somewhere near Earth. The ground beneath her, after all, felt something like asphalt, and she'd gotten a glimpse of what looked like buildings …

When she cracked her eyes open, though, she noted that the building structures around them – which were floating and almost entirely transparent – had neither external walls nor roofs. They rose high into the sky like plastic models of spines, each floor a vertebra-like disk. Bursting raindrops were landing in the buildings in heavy sheets amidst large, hopping sponges, who apparently lived inside the buildings and who seemed all too happy about the rainfall. For once, nothing seemed to be immediately endangering them.

Hermione groaned and closed her eyes, content just to breathe, to be alive and finally – _finally – _feel the pain subsiding from her body.

After a while, Tom shifted atop her, and she became instantly and intensely aware of the weight of his body, the way his leg had landed between hers, his knee rubbing against the inside of her thigh.

She summoned her willpower and dragged herself somewhat in a backward direction. He flopped sideways-ish, and they lay next to each other, staring up at a watery sky. The raindrops were truly huge, a glass of water apiece. Hermione managed to muster the energy to cover her mouth and nose with a shaking hand, struggling to breathe even though Riddle's air-creation spell had remained thankfully intact through their travels. She was sure at least one of the universes they'd gone through would have had an unbreathable atmosphere.

By the time the fire of pain died down, they were both drenched. Hermione got back to her feet, and Riddle did the same. He finally pocketed his wand.

"Least this place looks remotely habitable," Hermione said, her voice hoarse and practically inaudible over the drum of the rain.

"Emphasis on 'remotely,'" Tom replied, shifting his sodden hair off his forehead. He looked around, squinting through the rain's quicksilver veil. This had to be closer to Earth than a few of those other worlds, at least – if water existed in this universe, that was certainly a step in the right direction. "Let's find shelter," he said. "Somewhere to sleep."

"Yeah," said Hermione.

They headed down what seemed to be an actual road, a twisting blue line of rock that trailed between the hovering buildings. Every so often, a hopping sponge would pass them, releasing enthusiastic ululating sounds. Tom mused that there was a certain threshold for the utterly bizarre that his mind could conceive. He must have passed it quite a while back, and as such, he found it strangely difficult to be fazed by any of this. It was all highly reminiscent of the dreams he'd had while delirious with fever last summer, inclusive of the physical exhaustion as well.

After a few minutes' walk, they came across a building that actually had walls and a roof. They had to climb a set of hovering stairs to make it to the entrance hole, and by the time they reached the top of the steps, they were leaning on each other again, her shoulder pressing against his bicep, his hand loosely pressing against her back. Tom could feel her trembling. He was sure he was shaking himself, and for once, he couldn't even muster the presence of mind to force himself to control his body's actions. Even extended Apparition was rough on the human form. This was sheer insanity.

They slipped through the entrance hole into a narrow hallway. More holes were cut into the walls that flanked them, as if someone had replaced the inside of an apartment building with slices of Swiss cheese. The building, perhaps, was outdated for the sponge-people; that would explain the building being completely empty bottom-to-top, as they could see it was through the transparent walls and ceiling. Tom couldn't help wondering how sponges could build buildings in the first place, but he didn't have the energy to care properly, let alone conjure up an intelligent hypothesis.

Beside him, Hermione drew her wand and vacuumed the water off herself. Tom did the same. Exhaustion weighed heavy on their every movement.

"Through here," he said, walking down the hall a bit further and slipping through one of the holes in the wall. He didn't fancy having a run-in with angry denizens of this universe; the further they were removed from the outside world, the better. Hermione followed.

The room beyond was little more than a cubicle, woefully undersized as apartments went … though, Tom supposed, if you were a sponge, you hardly needed amenities such as beds or bathrooms. They both finally sank to the transparent floor. A warm headache lit up somewhere deep in Tom's cranium as he stretched out, his body nearly too long for the room. He flicked his wand, casting a light heating charm on the chilly air. Then he tapped the wall nearest to him. "Scuro," he mumbled, and the walls and ceiling of the room darkened, turning an opaque charcoal color, canceling the strange world outside.

He hazily observed Hermione, who was curling up on her side facing him, her eyelids already drooping shut.

It occurred to him that on Earth, it would be bizarre for them to sleep in the same room. Here, it seemed bizarre that they might not. Who cared about connotation here? It was human companionship, and thank God for it.

For a brief moment, Tom found it unfathomable that he would ever return to being alone, after his one fear – universe after universe – seemed to have become Hermione letting him go, taking the Timeglass and leaving him to rot in some other universe. With that feeling, an oppressive sense of separation anxiety that he would surely have found laughable were he in a state of actual cognizance, he closed his eyes.

Tom drifted awake several hours later and received a shock. Hermione had shifted, fitting snugly to him, her head tucked right beneath his.

For a moment, in his mildly panicked sleep-haze, options flung themselves through his mind. He considered shoving her away. He considered waking her up. Then he found himself wondering why he was panicking at all, really, as the warmth and closeness of her was actually quite something, grounding and honest, real and ordinary, satisfying and just a little bit intoxicating.

In fact, looking down at her mild frown in sleep, her knuckles brushing against the fabric of his shirt as if to knock at his heart, he actively resisted the idea of her sleeping any other way from now on.

He slipped his arm over her waist and tugged her the tiniest bit closer before falling immediately back to sleep.

* * *

><p>Riddle and Hermione moved cautiously over the next several days. They tried various methods of using the Timeglass, from using their wands on the thing to handling it in a multitude of different ways. Riddle recalled how Bansherwold had turned translucent in the flat of the elder Hermione Granger, an event that seemed like a lifetime ago. How he'd held onto the Timeglass for a while before turning incorporeal and vanishing altogether. What had he done? Hermione said that when Bansherwold had essentially used Side-Along transport for her out of the cottage, he hadn't done anything special to the Timeglass. Simply picked it up.<p>

If there'd been a silent incantation involved, then they'd have to do significant analysis on the structure of the object to work out how the incantation could be bypassed. By all accounts, incantations were usually just a shortcut, a way to verbalize a magical sentiment so it could be more easily expressed by a wand – thus why nonverbal magic was a purer form of the art.

Riddle supposed they were lucky for the Second Chaotic Assonance Theory. It seemed a little absurd to suggest that the places they went one after the next were _similar _to Earth, but they were at least survivable, not immediately fatal if Riddle kept his wand drawn and stayed on his toes. They hadn't imploded yet, or frozen in deep space, or appeared in the center of a star. The pure statistical likelihood of avoiding everything fatal to humans was probably infinitesimal, so … well, for the first time in his life, Riddle found himself thankful for small mercies.

By all accounts, though, their inability to return to Earth infuriated him. Hermione had said that when she'd left the Crown, she'd had a fleeting impression of the cottage on the plain, and had thus appeared there … in the right time, at least, even if it was the wrong universe. It seemed that time was manageable enough; there was an element to navigating the universes that they were getting wrong.

Riddle blamed his own power. If he'd been a feeble wizard, surely they wouldn't have gotten quite so far off-track.

They'd found themselves in a swampy reddish-brown planet at one point that smelled oddly delicious. After a few charms to determine if the swamp glop was edible, they'd eaten their fill and conjured flasks to hold more. Who knew, after all, when they'd come across something else that wasn't toxic or simply disgusting?

Whenever they were too tired to continue, they stopped in the next convenient universe and slept. Once, they'd been so exhausted that they'd fallen asleep right where they landed, Hermione's arm still locked rigid around his back. One way or another, they usually ended up in contact by the time one of them woke up, a fact about which neither was sure how they felt.

Riddle couldn't help but feel that she was becoming somewhat of a distraction, which was a feat given what exactly she was distracting him from. Still, though … human emotion was arguably just as alien to him as actual aliens, so maybe that made sense.

It was undeniable: becoming used to the feeling of her body against his, regularly and closely, created an anchor amidst the chaos. The sight of her, the sound of her voice, became something of a balm, as thin as all this was wearing his nerves and his restraint. The grip of her hand caged him inside himself, but inconveniently, it certainly did not assuage the increasingly physical urges he found himself fighting off more often than not. It was easy to attribute all _that _to a simple need for human reassurance, so he did, and tried to think nothing of it, and tried not to want to touch her face, her hair, the curves of her.

He also refrained from meeting her eyes too often, because whenever he did, he often felt that they saw too far past his own. They were hazel probes into thoughts he did not ask to have.

After four days of on-and-off travel, they eventually came to a stop on a planet that was more of an oversized asteroid than anything else. They ducked into a cave formation in the barren rock.

A short while later, they had settled in and set up a small green-burning fire. Taking a bite of swamp glop, Hermione levitated the Timeglass between them.

"I hate you," she said to the Timeglass, her mouth full.

_It hates us too,_ Riddle thought. _Evidently._

She swallowed. "I was actually thinking, though," she said, her sharp eyes narrowing at the point of fire in the center of the Timeglass. "I thought of it as a sort of Side-Along Apparition the other day, and it made me wonder if it functions in essentially the same way. Alen did compare it to Apparition, after all, though obviously it's much more advanced – I wondered if maybe it's impossible to use it properly with more than one person at once. After all, whenever we get tugged along, it's Alen who uses it, not either of us. Just him."

"I suppose it's a thought," Riddle said slowly. "I hesitate to suggest that only one of us try using it, at risk of one leaving the other behind."

"Well, it's bonded to me, Tom. I don't know how possible it would be for it to leave me behind anywhere, not without my consent."

"So, I would be the one to use it, then?"

Hermione nodded. "I think it's definitely worth a try. I can think of several magical objects that work with only one person at a time. A wand, for instance – two people trying to cast a spell out of the same wand, simultaneously, even if it's the same spell –"

"Massively unsuccessful. Yes." He rubbed his chin lightly, somewhat peeved that he hadn't thought of this himself. Of course, the only time he'd seen Bansherwold use the Timeglass in a normal, proper way, he'd been half-mad from imprisonment. He got to his feet. "Come here, then."

Hermione walked around the fire to his side and slipped her arm around his waist. He held out his hand beneath the Timeglass, she lowered her wand, and the solid weight of the thing dropped into his palm.

He pictured the Chamber of Secrets, dark and foul-smelling in 1998.

Something was definitely different, this time – the rush of light was not so tangled; their journey was a few degrees less exquisitely painful; it was easy for him to separate his hand from the Timeglass when he felt he should.

And they tumbled out of the air onto the surface of the same asteroid they'd left, only a few feet away from the long-dead remains of a fire within a cave.

"Interesting," said Hermione, in-between the customary gasps for breath. "Oh, this is interesting –"

"We're in the same universe," he said. "Future time."

"It's something in your mindset. It must be."

His eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"The only time it blasts us forward on a timeline is when the ideology isn't being properly embraced. I think …" Her face lit up. "You know, maybe it's that I've been supplying the understanding of the anonymity ideology, and it's just that you're so naturally powerful that we've been careening all over the place."

"Oh, well, if you have such a _thorough understanding_, then why don't you simply take us back?"

"Don't be catty, Tom. You've got to admit, it's not as if you've ever had any great appreciation for anonymity before. And I mean _proper_ anonymity, not all that pseudonym business." She bit her lip. "Besides, I don't think I can take us back, even if we wanted to risk trying it and leaving you behind. I don't think I've got the magical strength for that. I'm quite good with technical work, Transfiguration and Charms and such, but this is hardly technical; we're ripping open doors in space, for Merlin's sake." She shook her head. "I don't think I'd be able to get us far enough, especially with the distance we've traveled now."

"So … what, we stay here and you try to teach me how to properly internalize anonymity?" Tom said. "Sounds utterly delightful." Admittedly, the prospect _was_ far more appealing than more bursts of agony and sights he couldn't begin to fathom. And extended discussion with Hermione would hardly be torture, even if it was on such an inane topic as wanting to be nobody at all.

Still.

She shrugged hopelessly.

"Well," he said. "I suppose I must, then."

Hermione brightened. "If you're receptive, that's a good start. Just think of it, anyway … this actually feels doable, for the first time. Once you can get your thoughts under control, you can finally get us back to 1945 and 1998."

"The latter, maybe, but the former, no," Tom said coolly.

"Right," she said, sighing, "or you could try evading your impending death. Of course. My mistake."

An image of the elder Hermione's dead body flashed with alarming clarity in Tom's mind's eye. "I maintain that you shouldn't return, either," he said quietly.

The optimism dripped from Hermione's face like makeup melting out of place. "Please don't play Devil's Advocate with me," she said, sounding hurt.

"I'm not. It was a legitimate suggestion. You are worth more than what that life has lined up for you."

She tilted her head, giving him a curious look. Riddle straightened his posture, clasping his hands behind his back. Perhaps he had gone too far.

"And what else would I do?" she said. "Where would I go?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe anywhere that still retains possibilities rather than dreary actualities."

"Such as?"

"Back to 2075, if you wanted. You are a national hero there."

"I'm also under a false name." Hermione shook her head. "No, I'd rather be in a time where nobody knows me. Make a fresh start. Maybe go back and finish my last year of Hogwarts a couple decades after that, catch up on a century's worth of reading, pretend I was a transfer – " She cut herself off abruptly.

"What is it?" he said.

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?" she said, her eyes looking alarmingly wet all of a sudden. "I _do_ want to explore, don't I? I do want to have a life where I don't know its confines, where I can look at – at possibilities, and ask questions, and … but I can't. That's just it. It's _time, _Tom. And I've got to go back to mine."

She started to stride past him toward the cave, but he caught her arm. "Hermione." He turned her back around, let out an impatient sigh, and roughly wiped two tears from her cheeks where they'd fallen. "Don't be preposterous. You don't _have _to do anything. You've spent how long now exploring the farthest realms of possibility, and you still think you're locked into just one?"

Hermione gently shook him off. "It's scary, all right?"

"What is?" he demanded.

"The potential that I could do that. Just ignore what I know I should do and be utterly selfish and possibly muddle everything up."

Tom could barely keep himself from rolling his eyes. Leave it to this girl to be scared of her own _potential, _of all things, after nearly getting killed in the infinite depths of space a generous handful of times in the last few days.

"It's too scary to let myself consider the possibility that I could be happy doing that, chasing after that," Hermione said. Resolve entered her eyes. She drew herself up. "I've got to fix my energies on being happy _enough _with what I've got. That's what I've always done."

"What, settled for less because you assume there's nothing more lined up for you?" he scoffed.

"I – what? No!"

"That is almost verbatim what you just said."

"No, it's not. Realism, pragmatism, the acknowledgment of my human limits, that's what I'm talking about!"

"And pursuing happiness is not within your human limit?" Tom said. It was easy to fluster her usually, but right now it felt almost humiliatingly so. He had a hunch that it was because he was right, and she secretly knew it.

"Yes, of course it is, but – but I'm just one girl; I'm smart and I work hard but I'm not some … I'm not like Harry, I'm not a _Chosen One, _I know logically I can't be chasing after these huge, inaccessible things!" Hermione shook her head. "I've had to pick my battles, choose stepping stones to big issues. House Elf Rights. Prejudice against blood status. Tangible goals. I can't just toss everything away on some nebulous concept of happiness all of a sudden, and I'm certainly not going to –"

"_House Elf Rights_?" repeated Riddle, appalled. Saying the phrase felt like an Acid Pop was dissolving some vital part of his mouth.

"– oh, hush! And I'm certainly not going to prioritize my happiness above the right thing to do!"

"What you define as 'right' seems to be just a bit arbitrary."

"Do you even _have _a definition of 'right'?" she shot back.

"Yes," he said drily. "Something that House Elves shouldn't have."

Her fists flew up as one, and for a moment he thought she was going to try to punch him. But she forced her hands back down, her expression comically thunderous. When she spoke, she sounded near hysteria. "Well, I'm alone in this," she said. "That's a given, no matter what I do. So I might as well do what I think is right, just as long as nobody's going to understand what I've been through."

"On the contrary," Riddle said, keeping his expression glacier-smooth. "I understand."

She blinked a few times, and the anger melted away from her expression entirely, something dangerously close to comprehension appearing in its stead.

"What are you planning on doing, then?" she asked cautiously.

Riddle shrugged. "The possibilities, as I've learned, are infinite. Once I master the Timeglass, I can go anywhere, though I'd rather stay on our Earth. I suppose I have somewhat of a foolish semantic attachment to the place. In any case, I intend to live out one continuous block of infinity, starting somewhere following 2075 until an indeterminate time."

"That's your plan?"

"That is the plan. Yes."

"It sounds awfully lonely."

"As you said," Riddle replied stiffly. "I am alone in this. A given."

Hermione half-smiled. "Alone together," she said wryly.

Riddle met and held her eyes. He did not look away. Hers was the weight of a thousand gazes, but he did not bend. He thirsted to look at her stubborn mouth, at her folded arms, her chin held high, but her eyes were suns with an unimaginable gravity.

Perhaps he was going mad again, because for a moment he thought he might like to kiss her, simply and deeply.

Then she nodded to the cave, saying, "Come on, we should talk about the anonymity ideology." But they did not get the chance to do so, because then Alengurd Bansherwold burst from the air beside them, shocking them both out of words entirely.

He straightened up and took them both in with clear, hard eyes. "Finally," he said, sounding irritated. Without a further word, he grabbed their arms, held the Timeglass up again, and the three left the asteroid a cold and lonely satellite.

* * *

><p><strong>"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces<br>Between stars—on stars where no human race is.  
>I have it in me so much nearer home<br>To scare myself with my own desert places."**

**- Robert Frost  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Heh, all those crazy worlds were too much fun to write. DON'T DO DRUGS KIDS<strong>

**(do reviews instead, they have no adverse health effects and boost both your and my quality of life)**

**love you and hope you liked the plot-thickening!**

**-speech**


	14. 2102

**This groveling apology for the hiatus would be longer, but I'm on my work computer and y'all I gotta get out of here.**

**Eternal thanks to reviewers:**

**LuluDeer19, Kathy376fun, isabella, Kurai Ummei, Guest, thebluefeather, anoushkadas161, Dumbledoor, GruesomeEmpire, Guest, fauxromanov, veronica-s, Wandering the Arid Sea, LionsWing, Lobeira, anon, Rhaenys, anon, sunneedee, peanutbutterj3lly, aucleldu, FemmeFerret, smithback, Guest, the lovely Nongarak, Charmice, ohmyfish, UniquelyMi, Nytefyre, Ijoan, renyun, love-warmth-life, Besoin, StalkingMalfoy, FaeBreeze, mh21, Quinn Spencer, lizzywithfire, Ella Palladino, BlackShirt16, TheLightningScar, the beautiful & perfect Steph, angrypixels, EriEka127, Anom, Ember Nickel, AvoidedIsland, 013bela, FerrumVigro, and the love of my life probably, Mel.**

**Love you lots.**

**speech**

* * *

><p><strong>Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.<strong>

**- Buddha**

* * *

><p>Before she could even get her feet back under her, Alen had taken the double of the Timeglass from Hermione's pocket and placed it in his own.<p>

Hermione stumbled back upright, trying not to cry. "How did you find us?" she said, her voice quaking.

Alen took a step toward her, and she moved back from him. He stopped advancing, his face pained.

They stood on the bank of the Thames, though the river was clear like she'd never seen it and sparkling in an almost alarmingly picturesque fashion. They'd been a hundred universes removed, and now, just like that, they were back. How the hell had he found them? He'd mentioned tracking before, but how could he possibly be powerful enough to have tracked them _that_ far? They'd been helplessly lost – and worse, they'd been so close to getting somewhere with the Timeglass. Hermione was _sure _it was just a problem with Tom's mindset; that was all – damn it, just one more day and maybe they could have found their way home …

"How did you find us?" she demanded again, her voice rising to a hysterical shriek. Her words rang off a large metal device that moved over the river, occasionally taking in a huge gulp of water and spitting it out again.

Alen folded his arms. He looked marginally unimpressed, but mostly, he looked like he was waiting for something. "July 1st, 2102," he murmured.

_Hang on. _Hermione's rage spun on its edge, turning to a mixture of shock and realization. Now that she understood the theory, now that they were back on Earth and within range of her abilities, _she _could just take herself and Tom back to their own times.

Glancing at Alen, she struggled to keep her face blank. She couldn't betray any of this to him. All she needed was a spare moment, now. All she needed was the Timeglass …

Still, it was hard to imagine that – after Alen had found them on an asteroid floating a million universes away – he wouldn't be able to find them again. Even if they had the Timeglass and he didn't. She felt like fate just wouldn't let him leave them the hell alone.

Somewhere, a great clock struck three, and then another Hermione walked out of the air.

Seeing her was akin to being punched in the chest. All the wind went out of Hermione's lungs, and she gaped.

Back in 2036, the old version of herself, willingly sought out, had been at least somewhat manageable. This, though? The sight of this Hermione, her double but for the bushy curtain of hair falling about the other's shoulders, felt so wrong Hermione thought she might shiver right out of her own skin.

The other Hermione lifted her hand and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Hermione's hand twitched at her side as if to mirror the motion.

Other-Hermione turned to Hermione, and she felt herself pinned beneath the weight of her own gaze.

"Don't leave," Other-Hermione said, with a tone of near reluctance.

"_What_?" Hermione said. She had to leave. She had to return to her time, restore normalcy to her world –

And yet there was another feeling in her chest. Was that relief? Relief at being told by a greater power that there was a reason to stay?

Hermione bit back panic. She couldn't be relieved. She had to want to go back; _she had to go back._

"Don't," Other-Hermione repeated. "There's a time for everything."

On the bank beside her, Tom was staring at the double with narrowed eyes. Alen, on the other hand, had quite a different look on his face, something hungry and frankly unnerving.

Other-Hermione hurried to Hermione's side, reached into her pocket, and palmed something to Hermione. She murmured so that only the pair of them could hear. "Here: located at great risk."

Hermione tucked the object into her pocket, peeking down for an instant. In her hand was a vial filled with silvery fluid that could only be a memory.

"I'll be taking it back, then," Other-Hermione said, now approaching Alen with hand outstretched.

He hesitated, his hand straying toward his pocket. "How do I know you won't just …"

"You don't," Other-Hermione said. "You don't know and you can't know. You're going to have to trust me."

A grim look settled atop Alen's features. He levitated the second Timeglass out of his pocket and dropped it into Hermione's hand. She vanished with an earsplitting _bang._

* * *

><p>Hermione spent the next day – or, rather, period of twenty-four hours, which was divided up over a century – in a state of numb, miserable disbelief. It unsettled Tom to see her like this. He'd seen her exhausted to the point of collapse, but he had never seen her look so drained. He blamed Bansherwold for the change and resented him for eight thousand other reasons besides.<p>

Bansherwold seemed to have changed, too, in the time they'd left. His jocular, almost cavalier way of speaking to them had disappeared. Now he hardly spoke at all, and Riddle sometimes saw a gleam of desperation in the man's eyes. His explanation of their travel was unusually terse and lacked its usual self-satisfied quality: "This will hurt less in smaller increments," Bansherwold said. "Just keep quiet and let me handle it."

Bansherwold took the sullen Tom and the mute Hermione through time a few years at a go. They slipped through alleyways in the urban sprawl of California and dimly lit restaurants in Africa; they caught news reports as they went. Bansherwold explained, sometimes, exactly what was happening.

The start of the 2100s was demarcated by a series of hideous anti-Muggle hate crimes that racked up tensions between two worlds, worlds that had only started to merge with partial success by the turn of the century. Anti-wizard technology experiments progressed secretly in Muggle government strongholds around the world, "just in case," and whenever one of these experiments was discovered, outrage erupted. Mutual distrust became the norm.

Then, in 2128, a young Squib in Turkey named Alev Akar started a series of nonviolent protests to raise awareness of anti-Wizard and anti-Muggle crimes alike. Alev was just twenty-one years old. She was small, dark, and plain, with hair coiled around her head in a thick braid. Her following was instantaneous, international, and massive enough to terrify governments around the world. Two hundred and fifty million people shot sparks off the surface of the planet for her first proclaimed _ışı__k günde_, the Day of Light. Wizards shot sparks from their wands; Muggles shot fireworks. The result was stunning, when witnessed over satellite camera. The next year, Alev's celebration had triple that number.

The year after that, she was murdered, and the world went quiet, and what had been mutual distrust capitulated into apologies from both worlds. Integration efforts were renewed.

2140 passed, and 2150. Names started to blur together, even in Riddle's mind, and he had always prided himself on never forgetting a name or a face. The world started repeating itself.

A young, precocious man in 2153 attacked Los Angeles, set up a stronghold with a band of bloodthirsty followers, and subjugated half the continent, bent on world domination. But he was stopped. Memorials were had for his victims. He was labeled an atrocity, a lunatic, and turned into the butt of comedians' jokes within the decade.

It happened again in 2175, in Norway.

And again in 2183, in Ghana.

This embarrassed Riddle, for some reason.

2194. Bansherwold dragged them through the Western American Territories, which were now largely airborne. The ancient slums of earthbound San Francisco were buried in a haze of dust, mostly forgotten, picked over by the starving, the broken, the desperate. Colonies of Lethifolds crept through the subways; Streelers slimed up the streets at will. Impoverished Muggles fought them off with guns they'd fashioned from magic neutralizers and electric rifles.

High above, though, glassy vehicles slid through transparent tubes, and housing complexes like trees flowered across the sky. Solar panels glossed over with – bizarrely – Doxy venom kept them humming, floating, soaring.

2202. The trio finally stopped, back in London at last.

Diagon Alley looked so different, it made Riddle feel like they'd entered yet another bizarro alternate universe. Everywhere, wizards walked around with strange glowing headsets, or tapped their wands on their delicate car-pods, which revved and hovered away into the night. They were dressed in Muggle clothes – weird synthetic materials – or in robes, weird synthetic robes. Or in robes _over _Muggle clothes, which seemed almost perverse to Riddle, deeply wrong. God knew if some of them _were _Muggles – you couldn't even tell, anymore, could you?

The buildings themselves were a strange hodgepodge of the familiar and the new: some were still thatched, quaint, cobblestoned – but others were liberally interspersed with sleek glass walls, engraved with tiny metallic scripts; their interiors, round minimalist arenas hung with brooms that barely looked like broomsticks at all. Some were just dark oak rods, perfectly straight, without tails, which seemed a little hilarious to Riddle.

On one glass storefront, an advertisement for the 473rd Quidditch World Cup flickered in and out. Riddle heard a dead-sounding laugh from Hermione, and glanced over at her.

"Of all the things to last this long," she mumbled. "Quidditch."

"People do love their flashy little displays," Riddle said. "It's all just a wand-measuring contest, in the end."

Hermione cleared her throat, her cheeks turning slightly pink.

Bansherwold stopped in front of the Leaky Cauldron. Riddle was relieved to see that this place, at least, looked virtually identical to the version he was familiar with. The fact that he was _relieved _at the sight of a filthy little hole-in-the-wall pub deflated something in his chest.

He wondered exactly how much pride he had left to deflate, exactly.

As they entered the inn, the bartender – a burly man with a tattoo of a dragon curled over his forehead – raised a hand. "Welcome back, Al!" he called, over the heads of a few late-afternoon patrons.

Bansherwold's entire body had relaxed, and his face had taken on an easy grin, turning him into someone distinctly younger-looking. He waved back. "Smacked to be back, Rufus. Three rooms, yeah? Got two swims here."

Riddle traded an instinctive, alarmed look with Hermione. Bansherwold had altered his voice completely, speaking in some bizarre accent, vowels flattened and consonants thick.

But as Riddle listened more closely, he noticed that all the conversations floating around him were taking place in voices laden with the same accent. The London accent, he realized, had completely morphed over the years.

"Who are the two ye, then?" said Rufus as the trio approached the bar. "Drink?"

"No, we're –" Riddle started, but Hermione blurted,

"Yes. Something large and potent. Please."

Riddle looked down at her. The frazzled sort of desperation on her face was exquisite. He scoffed. It didn't sound quite as derisive as he'd expected it to.

Rufus' eyebrows waggled. "'Sa tongue ye got there. Which end ye from?"

Riddle looked to Bansherwold, hoping for a translation, as Rufus poured Hermione a frighteningly tall drink.

"They slimmed in from Iceland, 9 this morning," Bansherwold said smoothly. "My tab for the drinks, Rufus, I'll lift it. And I'd have a pref to head up now, if possible."

Rufus nodded and tossed a set of keys to Bansherwold over Riddle's head. As Bansherwold stalked off to the staircase, Rufus slid the drink over to Hermione, who took a huge gulp and promptly had an impressive coughing fit.

Looking at Rufus, Riddle realized that smoke was rising out of the nostrils of the dragon tattooed on the barman's forehead. Even as he watched, the dragon blinked a few times and raised its black head. It looked like a Hungarian Horntail.

"Watching my ridger?" Rufus said to Riddle, his green eyes dancing. "What's it doing, then?"

Riddle could hardly form words. "Walking down the side of your face," he managed. The magic involved in that was utterly ridiculous. The partial animation of his followers' Dark Marks had been the most potent charm, affixed to ink tinted with Boomslang venom. This – this was as if somebody had created a portrait out of this man's skin. "You can't … feel it move?"

"Never seen a ridger before?" Rufus waggled his eyebrows. "No. Don't feel 'em, don't know what they're up to. They cost bit of a penny, though, right penny."

The dragon slunk beneath the man's collar and disappeared. A moment later, a bloom of fire spread down the bartender's bicep and dissipated around his elbow.

"Here," the bartender said, setting an equally large drink in front of Riddle. "I'll leave ye two."

And as he did, Hermione gave Riddle another frazzled look that made his lips twitch in amusement.

"You should stop drinking that," he said drily.

"Oh, please," Hermione replied. She glanced over at the bartender, flicked her wand at the glass, and Vanished the contents. "I just need an excuse to stay in the bathroom for an unusually long time tonight."

"What? Why?"

Hermione extracted a vial filled with swirling silver liquid from her pocket. Riddle instinctively reached for it, but she held it away.

"Your older self gave that to you," he guessed. "What is it?"

"That's what I need to see." Hermione grimaced. "Unfortunately, I don't exactly have a Pensieve handy, so I thought I'd create a rudimentary one by inscribing the appropriate runes on the bathroom sink. Of course, there's the matter of …"

As she outlined her plan, Riddle found himself not particularly focusing on the details. He found himself looking at _her_, instead. The way her brows quirked inward as she examined every potential pitfall, the way her lips pursed in-between sentences and dissatisfactions, the slight glint in her eye when she reached her smug conclusion.

He found it gratifying to sit there and simply listen to her, he realized. It was a pleasure to hear her thoughts spilling out. It was a pleasure for her to share them with him.

When had that happened? When had she turned from a nemesis to a nuisance to a partner-in-defiance to a constant to _this_?

He did not even know, really, what _this _was, but he knew that there was a strange instinct in his chest for him to take a large swallow of that stiff drink in front of him and kiss her until the burn of that alcohol was all she could taste.

"I can help you with the runes," Riddle said idly, as if nothing at all had passed through his mind.

"Oh," Hermione said. She bit her lip, thought for a second, and said, "Yes, that'll work nicely. This needs to be as expeditious and convincing as possible, and if I really were violently drunk and throwing up, I'd need somebody to be plying me with water, anyway."

"You say this as if you have experience," Riddle said.

"You say that as if you think I don't," she sniffed, raising one eyebrow at him. A smirk tugged at a corner of his mouth, as if a string had connected their expressions.

She looked at him for a second too long, grabbed his drink, and took a swallow of it. Then she poured a liberal amount over her shirt. It smelled shockingly strong, hitting Riddle's nostrils as if somebody had flicked him hard on the bridge of the nose.

Vanishing the rest, she stood and tucked the vial back into her pocket. "That should do," she said, looking down at herself. With one hand, she tousled her hair, although it was still so short that the tousling had hardly any effect. "Do I look like a stumbling drunk yet?"

Riddle eyed her critically. "Your eyes aren't glassy enough."

She sighed. "Well, I'll keep them mostly shut. I suppose we should stay down here a bit longer, for it to be realistic."

"Long enough," Riddle said, "for me to have a drink or two, I think." He raised his hand to signal the bartender.

* * *

><p>"Hundreds of years of magical theory," Bansherwold said from somewhere above Hermione, "and they still haven't brewed a liquor that won't make people stop drinking before they turn into miserable wrecks. Wonderful to know."<p>

Hermione wondered if he was faking the irritation in his voice; if he knew she was actually completely sober. Either way, it wasn't actually enjoyable, hunching over the toilet and making herself retch, so she hoped he left soon.

"No need for you to concern yourself," said Riddle's voice. "I'll see to her."

"That makes it sound like you're going to dispose of her," said Bansherwold.

"I had ample time to do that," said Riddle acidly, "and I think of the two of us, only one is likely to bring about her demise."

There was a long pause. Then the door banged shut. Hermione straightened up, wiping her mouth with a grimace. "Well," she said, and then caught sight of the pensive look on Riddle's face. "What?"

"That was an interesting glare he just gave me," Riddle murmured. "I wonder …"

"What?" Hermione said.

"Nothing."

"Oh, don't give me that. Tell me." Hermione flicked her wand, casting _Muffliato _on the door. "If you have a theory, I want to hear it."

"He murdered your older self," Riddle said slowly. "I never particularly stopped to ask _why, _as there are a million reasons to need someone disposed of, but … what was his, exactly?"

"I assumed it was for intimidation's sake," Hermione said, "or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, to save me from what was coming, but …" She frowned. Come to think of it, the question was valid. Why had he murdered her in 2036? She would have seen the future already. She would have been well-prepared for the atrocities of the Crown, the wizard camps. She would have known exactly when to hide, or to join forces with Merlin's Order.

"Let's make the Pensieve," she decided, "and we can go back. Re-examine the memory. Maybe there's something we didn't know."

Riddle nodded. They set about sealing and setting the sink, which was chipped, filthy porcelain. Hermione etched a sequence of runes into its brim.

When all was said and done, the creation of a Pensieve was not a particularly strenuous task. Hermione had read a history of a man who had made a Pensieve out of the ocean itself, carving the requisite runes into the bedrock of some deep ocean trench. He had cast half his memories out to sea, and supposedly, one could still find bits of his memories floating out on the open ocean, silvery glints lost and diluted to time. She privately thought the book was mostly fairy tale, but it was an interesting concept, at least.

Hermione straightened up, plugged the sink, and took the vial of memory out of her pocket. "This first," she said.

"I'm coming in too," Riddle said.

Hermione looked at him for a moment. Presumably, the memory was something from the future, something that could help unravel where they were going. Bansherwold's plan. … It couldn't hurt for Riddle to know, could it? Her future self hadn't told her to keep it secret from him, in any case.

Besides, she had already trusted him with her life about a thousand times, as they'd been blasted through universe after treacherous universe. This felt almost paltry in comparison.

Hermione took his hand and ducked her head into the sink. The crown of her head made contact with the tiny amount of liquid, and then they were spinning, spinning, and falling.

They'd been here before.

This was familiar. Hermione shook her head and looked at Tom. How was this right?

This wasn't the future. They stood in the grand setting of the House of Lords, watching Tom battle the elder Gurdy Bansherwold. Chaos stormed around them, curses being flung left and right. Muggles screaming and storming back from the duel.

But –

This wasn't where Hermione had been standing. This wasn't Hermione's memory.

Of course it wasn't. _Located at great risk, _the other Hermione had said_. _She'd stolen it, but from – ?

Hermione looked to her left. Alen stood inches from her, his wand poised to strike.

It was his memory she'd taken. Alen's own memory of murdering himself.

"_AVADA –"_ Tom roared, but Alen's mouth had already spat the words.

"_Avada Kedavra."_

The jet of green light rushed toward Gurdy Bansherwold. The old man flung his wand out, conjured a shield so blindingly bright Hermione shut her eyes.

As she closed her eyes, she heard a thought. Distinctly, overhead, it rang out:

_Scapan anwaz._

When she opened her eyes again, Gurdy Bansherwold was dead on the ground. Then the world dissolved and reformed around them. The memory was replaying.

"What …" she said. Riddle, on her right, only shook his head. His eyebrows were deeply creased. He took out his wand and flicked it, but nothing happened.

"What were you trying to –"

"I was trying to make a barrier. We need shade," he said.

"To see what happens," Hermione said slowly, looking back at the duel.

"Yes. Keep your eyes open."

She nodded.

"_Avada Kedavra," _said Bansherwold.

The light was so bright, Hermione had to hold her eyes open with her fingers. They watered and burned. She let out an agonized sound.

But she _saw_. The elder Bansherwold's figure twisted inside the shield he had created. The Avada – had it missed, vanished? Had it connected? She could scarcely see – and the deafening _roar _was blocking out all sound, but for a split second, the figure at the center of the light seemed to ripple,as if his clothes had turned empty for just a moment, fluttering –

_Scapan anwaz, _said the great overhead voice.

Bansherwold's nonverbal spell, a tiny yellow point of light, rushed into the inferno.

And it was over. The whole thing had taken maybe three seconds. When the light cleared, Bansherwold was lying on the ground.

Hermione turned to Tom. "Did you see –"

"Yes, I – but I've never heard of that spell," Riddle said, striding across the room.

"_Scapan anwaz. _Saxon derivation," Hermione said slowly. "Old potions, high charms, or complex transfiguration. That's all that would need …"

Then, with a great lurch in her stomach, she remembered Barty Crouch, Jr. having transformed his father's corpse into a bone.

"What?" Riddle demanded, examining her stricken expression. "What is it?"

"He's not dead. He didn't die," Hermione said, her mind churning. "But _why _… we haven't seen him since then, where could he possibly have … _why _would he have …"

"That corpse was a transfiguration?" Riddle said. "What is the point of that?"

"Besides briefly making himself – and us – national heroes?" Hermione said. "I haven't the foggiest."

She and Riddle looked at each other for a few minutes as the scene replayed over and over in the background. Their eyes dared each other to figure it out, to understand.

Where had he gone?

Where had he sent himself?

Why did it matter? Why would he want them to think he was dead?

* * *

><p>They stumbled out of the Pensieve just in time to hear a knock on the door. Hermione quickly flicked her wand at the door, removing the <em>Muffliato.<em>

"Oi! When ye goin' to be out, next fuckin' year?" said a gruff voice.

"My friend's ill; use the one on the first floor," Riddle snapped back.

Hermione made a few retching sounds for effect, but once she heard the footsteps retreating, she stopped and gave Riddle an odd look.

"What?" he said.

"'My friend,' is it?" she said slowly.

"Well, what else was I supposed to say?" he sniffed, literally looking down his nose at her.

She snorted. It was almost funny when he slipped back under that mask, becoming a caricature of himself again. Pretending to be the same person from 1945.

He looked away as if he'd heard the thought. "Just … take the memory out, would you, silly girl."

Hermione chuckled. "You realize it makes you sound about seventy when you say that _silly girl _rubbish?" she said, placing her wandtip to her temple. Closing her eyes, she drew the strand of memory out of her head and placed it in the basin.

"We're both over two hundred at this point, so seventy makes me look positively youthful," Riddle said.

She slipped her arm into his and ignored how he stiffened slightly at her touch. Then she leaned over, and they were sliding back into the memory of her death.

"_You're displeased with this future, I daresay,"_ Past-Tom was saying. "As I would be."

"_Be quiet. Your postulates have no place here," _Past-Hermione snapped.

"That was polite," Tom remarked.

"Well, I was right," Hermione mumbled, hardly paying attention. She was examining the flat. The well-swept hearth; the photographs on the mantel; the Gryffindor-red rug. Anything strange, anything out of place …

The elder Hermione, now that Hermione was examining her so closely, seemed the tiniest bit uncomfortable. She was tucking her graying hair back too often; she was twisting her watch and shifting in her chair every couple of minutes. Of course, discomfort was natural – she was going to _die, _for goodness' sake, and the old woman knew it all too well.

Then a thought struck Hermione: if Bansherwold hadn't killed himself, who was to say he hadn't also faked his murder of her?

But she forced herself to swallow her excitement at the possibility. She'd seen it happen. She'd seen the curse connect directly with her body, no shields or bright light or trickery. There was no coming back from the Avada Kedavra.

Finally, the elder Hermione glanced at the clock. 12:47.

"_Oh, dear. I really don't have much time, do I?_"

Hermione shook her head, gritting her teeth. Why hadn't she said anything? Why hadn't she given them some clue?

"_Please don't be upset or rash," _the elder Hermione said. "_You'll have to go in a few minutes, regardless. But know that, at this point in my life, I am happy, and I am satisfied."_

Bansherwold stepped out into the apartment, and Hermione the Elder's eyes glowed with pain, understanding, resignation. _"Alengurd. Alen. Here again, are you?"_

And right before the curse: _I've long forgiven you."_

Tom and Hermione watched it again, and again, and again, but neither of them could understand.

* * *

><p>Hermione scrubbed out the runes, repairing the basin of the sink. She recollected her own memory and let Bansherwold's coil back into its vial.<p>

The day behind them felt unimaginably long. They had been awake for God knew how many hours, and the years had piled up on them. Hermione trudged out of the bathroom with her thoughts railing against the inside of her head.

As they walked back to their rooms, Bansherwold emerged from his. Hermione instantly adjusted her walk, staggering slightly, letting her eyes droop so much, they were nearly shut. She staggered with a bit too much actual weight behind the lurch, but suddenly an arm was around her waist, holding her upright.

"Is she better?" Bansherwold asked Riddle, as Hermione let her body sag against Riddle's side.

"Marginally," Riddle replied. "It was not a delightful experience."

"How chivalrous of you to endure it," Bansherwold said, and Hermione knew she wasn't imagining the sardonic edge to his voice.

Riddle's fingers tightened slightly on her waist, and Hermione's heart did something strange and inappropriate in her chest.

"Well, one of us needs to have some sense of decency, since the only one we had between the three of us is currently out of commission," Riddle said smoothly.

A pause.

"Good night," said Bansherwold. He shut his door with what sounded like unnecessary force.

Hermione opened her eyes and straightened her stained shirt. She moved slightly away from Riddle, but his hand didn't leave her side. Feeling oddly outside herself, she looked down at his hand, resting there on her waist, and then back up at him. He was scrutinizing her with transparent intensity.

She remembered where they had last slept. On a barren white chip of a planet, the tiniest prop in the vast dark opera house of space. She had awoken with his hand touching the back of her neck, her cheek pressed to his forearm. Her hand resting lightly on his chest.

There was some sort of disassociation, she thought, going on here. It was not a good one. She had lost the sight of Voldemort in him. The age-old, instinctive repulsion of looking at the face of a young Voldemort was long-gone; now she could hardly even picture Riddle in Hogwarts robes, let alone picture him calling a Basilisk or being Head Boy. It seemed nonsensical.

There was a disconnect between what she knew to be true and what she _felt _to be true. Part of her wondered if these two truths could exist simultaneously, or if they were mutually exclusive.

She blinked a few times. As her thoughts disengaged, Hermione looked at him standing there with eyes that felt new. In concrete terms, he was just a young man. Still far too thin. Cheekbones like cliffs. Dark hair and brown eyes, alert and living brown eyes.

His hand shifted on her waist, moving down to rest on her hip, and a pulse broke out racing in her stomach. Energy lit up her back, a shiver that darted out to her fingertips. Her mind went blank, every thought replaced by one word: _shit, shit, shit shit shit –_

He opened the door to her room. She went inside, and he followed.

He shut the door behind them. Hermione stood facing him, her arms folded. He took one step toward her. Just one – so close so quickly. She felt his body already, a phantom presence. His strangely familiar body that had been glued to her through time, through universe after universe. A perfectly postured line.

She looked up at his face. It was dark in the room, except for the neon glow coming in from outside, from a sign across the street. _Apothecary, _it said, in blinking orange. The harsh color lit Tom's face up like a warning sign. It glazed his eyes with an orange streak, making him look crazed, almost feverish. He placed his hands on her shoulders and the weight of them startled her, somehow. He leaned down slightly, but she didn't close her eyes. She placed her hands on his waist, slipped her thumb under the fabric of his shirt, felt his skin warm under her fingertip. She didn't know what else to do except to hold on.

Riddle pinned her back against the door. Their bodies were sealed together, all of a sudden, and she was sure he would be able to feel her pulse drumming in every inch of her. Where his hips touched her. Where his thighs pressed hers. Where his chest pushed against hers.

His eyes were practically black, now that they had turned away from the light. They were unblinking, unwavering, devouring her. He was so close, now; his lips were a centimeter from hers, and there – a centimeter away, with the space between their lips alight and aching – he hesitated.

Hermione reached up; her shaky fingers trailed the curve of his jaw. He closed his eyes and let out a breath; Hermione's lips tingled under that faint brush of air. She kept examining, kept studying. Where his tangled lashes met the top of his cheek, it looked like stitches. Where his brow was creased, the crevice was a cavern in the smoothness of his skin.

She could see every tiny line in his skin and every pore in his nose. She could feel his fingers tightening on her shoulders, his whole self pressing her back into the door. She could practically taste him already.

What she couldn't do was breathe.

* * *

><p><strong>Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.<strong>

**- Soren Kierkegaard**

* * *

><p><strong>right, so, er ... right.<strong>

**reviews are a lot better than sex in my experience**

**let's just ... let's just leave that statement there**


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